Verdi
Rigoletto, Welsh National Opera review - back to what they do bestMonday, 23 September 2024
We were of course lucky to get this new WNO Rigoletto at all. If it weren’t for the fact that, in the end, the company’s wonderful chorus and orchestra couldn’t wait to get back to doing what they do best, and accepted a modest glow of light at the... Read more... |
La traviata, Royal Opera review - a charismatic soprano in a serviceable revivalTuesday, 10 September 2024
Later this autumn Richard Eyre’s La Traviata celebrates its 30th birthday. Not bad going for the director’s first ever foray into opera – a genre he admitted holding an “unreasonable prejudice against”.And perhaps that’s the secret to this Royal... Read more... |
Verdi's Requiem / Capriccio, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - words, music, judgementTuesday, 27 August 2024
The Philharmonia’s residency was the centrepiece of the Edinburgh International Festival’s final weekend, and it’s right that the orchestra should be the focus because they were consistently the finest thing about both their Verdi Requiem and their... Read more... |
Prom 6, Verdi's Requiem, BBCNOW, Bancroft review - running the emotional gamutWednesday, 24 July 2024
Returning after ten months to the unique vasts of Albert’s colosseum, especially for a Verdi Requiem as powerful as this and a packed hall, felt like a rebirth. There was immediate purging in the focused whispers of the first “Requiem aeternam”s,... Read more... |
Simon Boccanegra, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - thrilling, magnificent explorationFriday, 19 April 2024
If ever more evidence were needed of Sir Mark Elder’s untiring zest for exploration and love of the thrill of live opera performance, it was this ground-breaking collaborative event with Opera Rara – a performance coupled to a new studio recording... Read more... |
Verdi's Requiem, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Pappano, Parco della Musica, Rome review - peak poignancyThursday, 08 February 2024
Antonio Pappano is at a hinge in his illustrious career, as the exciting transfer across London from Covent Garden to the London Symphony Orchestra proceeds, and the word "Emeritus" is added to his title as Music Director of his home-from-home in... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Ravenna - Riccardo Muti passes on a lifetime's operatic wisdomTuesday, 26 December 2023
Does “the practice of opera singing in Italy” need help from UNESCO, which has newly inscribed it on the “Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”? Italian opera is surely immensely popular worldwide. But when it comes to... Read more... |
Un ballo in maschera, Chelsea Opera Group, Cadogan Hall review - Italianate vitality, if not much finesseMonday, 23 October 2023
Eighteenth century Sweden is the nominal setting for A Masked Ball, but its essence is a unique mixture of Italian testosterone and French opéra-comique elegance. If this concert performance brought it closer to the indiscriminate vitality of early... Read more... |
Falstaff, Opera North review - going green and having funFriday, 29 September 2023
There’s a charmingly retro feel to Opera North’s new Falstaff, which comes from it being done as part of their new “green”, i.e. ecologically conscious, season.Leslie Travers’ set is made of bits from other productions and – most notably – shows... Read more... |
La Traviata, Welsh National Opera review - memorable revival, unforgettable leadSaturday, 23 September 2023
It’s always tempting, at curtain-up in La Traviata, to settle back, half-close one’s eyes, and soak up the familiar without the anxiety of the new. Not this time you won’t. David McVicar’s lavish 2009 text-true staging is being revived with a... Read more... |
Don Carlo, Royal Opera review - Lise Davidsen soars above routineSaturday, 01 July 2023
Not a good start. The tenor (Brian Jagde) walks downstage and sings loudly, if securely, to the audience: hardly a characterisation of an idealistic young Infante meditating on love. The next voice, the Page’s, is barely heard (Ella Taylor gets... Read more... |
Il trovatore, Royal Opera review - heaven and hellFriday, 23 June 2023
The trouble with Trovatore, Verdi’s sometimes barrel-organish, slightly middle-aged troubadour, isn’t so much the silly shocker of a plot, triggered by a gypsy so crazed with vengeance that she throws her own baby on a bonfire by mistake, as the... Read more... |
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