Royal Opera
Così fan tutte, Royal Opera review - vibrant youth and vocal beautyThursday, 30 June 2022
Irish soprano Jennifer Davis, a stunning Elsa in this Royal Opera season's revival of Wagner’s Lohengrin, was the lure to sit through Jan Philipp Gloger's Mozart Così again (the title, by the way – "All Women Do It" – belies the complexity applied... Read more... |
Samson et Dalila, Royal Opera review - from austerity to excess, with visual rigour and aural beautyFriday, 27 May 2022
Words and situations are one-dimensional, but the music is chameleonic, if not profound, and crafted with a master’s hand. What to do about Saint-Saëns’s Biblical hokum? In Richard Jones’s new production, the end justifies the means, with persecuted... Read more... |
'How that music was created remains to me a complete mystery': John Tomlinson on fellow Lancastrian Harrison BirtwistleFriday, 20 May 2022
It has been a difficult couple of years for us in the world of opera, losing several of our most respected and admired colleagues who have inspired us over several decades. The names of Harry Kupfer, Graham Vick, Bernard Haitink come immediately to... Read more... |
Lohengrin, Royal Opera review - a timely return to warzone BrabantWednesday, 20 April 2022
David Alden’s Lohengrin is back at Covent Garden for a first revival. The defining image the first time round, in 2018, was of the ending, a political rally for King Henry’s regime, with Lohengrin and the swan as its icons. That felt crude – a two-... Read more... |
Peter Grimes, Royal Opera review - impressive, not quite devastatingFriday, 18 March 2022
"Why does he have to sentimentalise this piece?", Britten is reported by former Royal Opera director John Tooley to have said of Jon Vickers as Peter Grimes the tormented fisherman, so very different from the composer's life partner and creator of... Read more... |
Rigoletto, Royal Opera review - second time luckyTuesday, 22 February 2022
Two Royal Opera staples, Verdi's La traviata and Puccini’s Tosca, now come round with too much frequency for critical coverage. It looks like Director of Opera Oliver Mears’ Rigoletto will do the same. Yet the production’s September 2021 debut was... Read more... |
Theodora, Royal Opera review - God, love, sex, death - and terrorismTuesday, 01 February 2022
Some of Handel's late London oratorios, like the indestructible Semele, work well as fully staged operas. Others, usually the ones which swap mythology for the sacred, need dramatic help. Theodora is one of them, though Peter Sellars' now-legendary... Read more... |
Nabucco, Royal Opera review - high passion but low dramaSaturday, 15 January 2022
This latest revival of the Royal Opera’s Nabucco production has suffered more than most from COVID disruptions. At the first night, on 20 December, the chorus were obliged to wear masks, news that was greeted by boos from the audience. Then the next... Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Royal Opera review - New Year champagneMonday, 10 January 2022
One of the galvanizing wonders of the operatic world happened when David McVicar’s production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro was new, back in 2006: the sight and sound of Royal Opera music director Antonio Pappano in seamless dual role as... Read more... |
Macbeth, Royal Opera review - bloody, bold, and resoluteWednesday, 17 November 2021
Phyllida Lloyd’s production of Macbeth has been in rep at the Royal Opera since 2002, and it is a solid performer. The setting is slick and vaguely period, with lots of iron weaponry, smart, pony-tailed warriors, but not a kilt in sight. The set (... Read more... |
'Everyone who played for him always gave their very best': remembering Bernard Haitink (1929-2021)Tuesday, 02 November 2021
Few musicians get to stage-manage a dignified departure from the world. Among his last compositions, Richard Strauss set a poem by Eichendorff depicting an old couple looking into the sunset and asking “is this perhaps death?”, and towards the end... Read more... |
Royal Opera House lullabies for Little AmalTuesday, 26 October 2021
“I want to tell her that people will be good,” Tewodros Aregawe of Phosphoros Theatre confided to us as Little Amal closed her eyes on the giant bed made up for her in the Paul Hamlyn Hall, “that all the people with kind eyes who have walked... Read more... |
