Scottish Opera
Oedipus Rex, Scottish Opera, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - beautifully uncomplexWednesday, 14 August 2024Immersive opera such as this can be tricky to pull off, but the magic of Roxana Haines’s new production of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex lies in its simplicity, letting the material organically weave around the audience without overcomplications or... Read more... |
Marx in London, Scottish Opera review - the humour of history made manifestFriday, 23 February 2024An opera about a day in the life of Karl Marx doesn’t exactly sound like a barrel of laughs. But then so much of Jonathan Dove’s witty 2018 work proves that things are not always what they seem, whether that’s through Dove’s jaunty score-writing,... Read more... |
Best of 2023: OperaWednesday, 27 December 2023Choosing a limited best seems almost meaningless when even simply the seven operatic experiences I've relished in the run-up to Christmas (nothing seasonal) deserve a place in the sun. But in a year which has seen Arts Council devastation versus... Read more... |
Daphne, Scottish Opera, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - Strauss’s translucent hymn to natureMonday, 11 December 2023On an Edinburgh afternoon of torrential rain close to the winter solstice, what ecstasy to be transported to an ancient Greek midsummer day, a Claude landscape with shepherds calling across the hills, painted in the most translucent colours by... Read more... |
Ainadamar, Scottish Opera/Opera Ventures review - worlds collide in fiery fusionFriday, 04 November 2022Ainadamar - meaning "fountain of tears" in Arabic – is the name given to a natural spring high in the hills above the Andalucian city of Granada, the site where the poet and playwright Federico Garica Lorca was executed in 1936 during the... Read more... |
The Gondoliers, Scottish Opera, Hackney Empire review - G&S con amoreSunday, 03 April 2022Having sung the Gondoliers’ Duet with an Iranian tenor who’d been a big pop star in his native land, I know that internationalism hit performances of the Savoy operas some time ago (this superb but all-white ensemble admittedly doesn't follow the... Read more... |
The Miserly Knight / Mavra, Scottish Opera review - a bold double act in the heart of ScotlandWednesday, 23 March 2022To stage a double bill of unusual 20th century Russian operas would be brave at the best of times. To do so in the Fair City of Perth amply demonstrates Scottish Opera’s laudable commitment to extend its influence beyond the Edinburgh-Glasgow... Read more... |
Hansel and Gretel, Scottish Opera online - bewitching feast for ears but not eyesFriday, 12 February 2021Christmas isn’t just for Christmas, Daisy Evans’s bargain-basement fir-trees-and-tinsel production of Humperdinck’s evergreen masterpiece seems to be telling us. Filmed in Glasgow’s Theatre Royal last December, the February online premiere doesn’t... Read more... |
Così fan tutte, Scottish Opera online review - wit and deception in an empty theatreMonday, 14 December 2020For its latest production, unveiled on Sunday evening but recorded in November, Scottish Opera toys playfully with the absurdities of Covid-compliant performance practice. But maybe sensing our weariness with the whole business, it is not overdone.... Read more... |
La bohème, Scottish Opera – pandemic PucciniMonday, 07 September 2020Picture the scene. A vast steel gazebo covers a nondescript parking lot next to an industrial unit in Glasgow. With a clear plastic covering, it is the most rudimentary of shelters, sides open to admit the roar of the M8 and the wailing of sirens,... Read more... |
Nixon in China, Scottish Opera - musical chatter, poetic banalitySaturday, 29 February 2020Scotland was at the cutting edge of culture in 1988, when the Edinburgh International Festival hosted the UK premiere of Nixon in China in the Houston Grand Opera production at the cavernous Playhouse. John Adams’ first opera, documenting the... Read more... |
Edinburgh International Festival 2019: Breaking the Waves, Scottish Opera/Opera Ventures review - great film makes a dodgy operaThursday, 22 August 2019Love him or hate him, Lars von Trier has time and again made the unpalatable and the improbable real and shatteringly moving in a succession of great films. Breaking the Waves set an audacious precedent. Baldly told, it's a story of a mentally ill,... Read more... |
- 1 of 3
- ››