Rome
Agrippina, Royal Opera review - carry on up the CampidoglioTuesday, 24 September 2019
It was said of the Venetian audiences randy for the satirical antique of Handel's first great operatic cornucopia in 1709 that "a stranger who should have seen the manner in which they were affected, would have imagined they were all distracted".... Read more... |
Prom 59: Benvenuto Cellini, Monteverdi Choir, ORR, Gardiner review - don't stop the carnivalTuesday, 03 September 2019
So we never got the ultimate Proms spectacular, the four brass bands at the points of the Albert Hall compass for Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts, in the composer's 150th anniversary year. Yet Sir John Eliot Gardiner has learnt how to work the... Read more... |
Imperium, Gielgud Theatre review - eventful, very eventful, Roman epicThursday, 05 July 2018
History repeats itself. This much we know. In the 1980s, under a Tory government obsessed with cuts, the big new thing was “event theatre”, huge shows that amazed audiences because of their epic qualities and marathon slog. A good example is David... Read more... |
Tosca, Welsh National Opera review - ticking the traditionalist boxesSaturday, 10 February 2018
Opera-lovers: if you’ve finally had enough of the wheelchairs and syringes, the fifties skirts and heels, the mobile phones and the white box sets, and the rest of the symbolic paraphernalia of the right-on modern opera production, pop along to the... Read more... |
Titus Andronicus, RSC, Barbican review - blood will outWednesday, 20 December 2017
Live theatre, eh? It had to happen. On press night a sound of what seemed to be snoring (the production’s really not dull) revealed, in the Barbican stalls, a collapse. About an hour in, a huge amount of blood is smeared over Titus Andronicus’s... Read more... |
Antony and Cleopatra, RSC, Barbican review - rising grandeurWednesday, 13 December 2017
Is there a key to “infinite variety”? The challenge of Cleopatra is to convey the sheer fullness of the role, the sense that it defines, and is defined by only itself: there’s no saying that the glorious tragedy of the closing plays itself out, of... Read more... |
Guy Johnston on his 1714 Tecchler cello - 'every day I start again and explore the possibilities within'Saturday, 07 October 2017
This adventure began in 2014 when my cello turned 300 years old. As birthdays go, it was a big one, so for me it felt important to do something special to celebrate. Why not imagine a journey back to Rome where it was made?The role of the cello has... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Guy Johnston, Joyce El-Khoury, Michael Spyres, The ChanteuseSaturday, 07 October 2017
Guy Johnston: Tecchler’s Cello - From Cambridge to Rome (King’s College Cambridge)Acquiring a second-hand instrument always leads one to wonder what sort of a life it led before. Did said instrument enjoy a flourishing professional career, or was it... Read more... |
Prom 54 review: Kavakos, Filarmonica della Scala, Chailly - cool Milanesi mute Roman exuberanceSaturday, 26 August 2017
Last night was one of those rare occasions when I'd rather have heard Respighi's gaudy-brilliant Roman Festivals than Brahms's Violin Concerto. It wasn't just that concerts like Charles Dutoit's 2014 Prom had shown us that the Italian's Roman... Read more... |
La clemenza di Tito, Glyndebourne review - fine musical manoeuvres in the darkThursday, 27 July 2017
So much light in the Glyndebourne production of Brett Dean's Hamlet; so much darkness in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito according to director Claus Guth. Something is irredeemably rotten in the state of ancient Rome, at odds with the fundamental... Read more... |
CD: Lory D - Strange DaysMonday, 26 June 2017
Imagine that The Ramones were not only still playing into the mid 2000s, but were still writing new songs as good as “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” and still sending young audiences completely delirious to boot. That might seem fanciful, but it's a... Read more... |
L'Incoronazione di Poppea, EBS, Gardiner, Colston Hall, BristolTuesday, 09 May 2017
Whatever musicologists may tell us about the patchy authenticity of Monteverdi’s last two operas, they unquestionably make a pair. Il ritorno di Ulisse is all about fidelity and ends with a love duet between the reunited husband and wife. L’... Read more... |
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