Verdi
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... |
Classical CDs: Nursery rhymes, anvils and polar explorersSaturday, 10 June 2023
Isata Kanneh-Mason: Childhood Tales (Decca)Ernst von Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Song is one of the great concertante works for piano and orchestra, rightly compared to a full-scale concerto by soloist Isata Kanneh-Mason. You’ll... Read more... |
Rigoletto, Opera Holland Park review - Verdi's Duke gets the Oxbridge treatmentWednesday, 31 May 2023
“I am a poor student,” the Duke tells a smitten Gilda, in music that can barely keep a straight face, so plush is its melody, so oozing with confidence and privilege.It’s a short step from there to Cecilia Stinton’s new Rigoletto for Opera Holland... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Brno - a visionary at home in his ‘Moravian Bayreuth’Saturday, 24 December 2022
“Visionary,” I’m told, is a clichéd word these days. But so long as you don’t fling it about too freely, it’s apt: for me, there are only two visionary directors working in opera right now. One is our own Richard Jones – though even he can get it... Read more... |
Aida, Royal Opera review - dour but disciplinedMonday, 26 September 2022
No gods, ancient Egyptian or otherwise; no sinister priest along the lines of Russia’s antichrist Patriarch Kiriil, sending soldiers to their deaths with the promise of heaven. Military ritual under what looks like a Russian/Chinese flag prevails in... Read more... |
Prom 1, Verdi's Requiem, BBCSO, Oramo review - introspective sorrow and consolation between the blazesSaturday, 16 July 2022
Any sensitive festival planner knows to begin the return to a new normal with something soft and elegiac – reflecting on all we’ve lost and mourned these past two years, as well as what we’re facing in the world now. Just over a fortnight ago, at... Read more... |
Otello, Grange Park Opera review - angels and demonsTuesday, 21 June 2022
The devil, in Verdi’s Otello, doesn’t quite have all the best tunes. Desdemona trumps him there. But the arch-manipulator Iago boasts a part of such polished, seductive wickedness that (as in Shakespeare’s tragedy) the villain can often make off... Read more... |
Oberto, Chelsea Opera Group, Cadogan Hall review - Verdi’s first opera bounces into lifeTuesday, 05 April 2022
There are quite a few dull patches in the early Verdi operas that aren’t Nabucco, Ernani or Macbeth, so I wasn’t expecting so very much from the 26-year-old composer’s first shot. That was without taking into account how spiritedly the ad hoc... Read more... |
Rigoletto, Opera North review - Covid shocks, debut pleasuresFriday, 25 March 2022
Beware of joining the Duke of Mantua’s sleazy feast in time of Covid too late, as I did on Opera North’s Newcastle leg of its Verdi journey. You may find more than a couple of the distinguished guests on stage have fallen sick – three, no less, on... 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... |
First Person: Femi Elufowoju Jr. on directing Verdi's 'Rigoletto'Thursday, 20 January 2022
I find that my experience of living as a Black man in the UK cannot help but inform the way I approach my work and never more so than with Verdi’s Rigoletto. It was because Verdi’s and his librettist Piave’s exploration of the impact of difference... 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... |
