WNO
BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2019 Final, BBC Four review - stage confidence, supportive set-upMonday, 24 June 2019
If ever there was an instance of the great being the enemy of the good, it happened after all the live singing on Saturday night. This year we all remember, with sadness for his early death and amazement at his burning, burnished talent, the... Read more... |
Brundibár, Welsh National Opera review - bittersweet children's opera from the ghettoMonday, 24 June 2019
Politics, in case you may not have noticed, has been in the air of late: questions of escape, release, borders, refugees, things like that. So WNO’s June season of operas about freedom has been suspiciously well timed. We’ve had the dead man walking... Read more... |
The Magic Flute, Welsh National Opera review - charming to hear, charmless to look atSaturday, 16 February 2019
I last saw this Magic Flute, directed by Dominic Cooke, when it was new, some 14 years ago, and I remember it mainly, I’m afraid, for its lack of visual charm. Nothing much has changed: the relentless box sets (designer Julian Crouch), not a leaf or... Read more... |
Un ballo in maschera, Welsh National Opera review - opera as brilliant self-parodyMonday, 11 February 2019
Why is Un Ballo in maschera not as popular as the trio of Verdi masterpieces – Rigoletto, Traviata, Trovatore – that, with a couple of digressions, preceded it in the early 1850s? Its music is scarcely less brilliant than theirs, and if its plot is... Read more... |
Best of 2018: OperaWednesday, 26 December 2018
Outnumbered by four to one: out of the classical/opera team, Alexandra Coghlan, Jessica Duchen, David Benedict and Boyd Tonkin all chose English National Opera's production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess as their best of the operatic year, while I... Read more... |
War and Peace, Welsh National Opera review - an Operation Barbarossa that comes offMonday, 17 September 2018
What lunatic would ever have the idea of turning War and Peace into an opera? Well, maybe if you, a composer, had found yourself in Moscow in June 1941 when news of the German invasion reached the Soviet capital, you might have decided to mount an... 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... |
La forza del destino, Welsh National Opera review - rambling drama, fine musicSaturday, 03 February 2018
David Pountney’s tenure at WNO has been an almost unqualified success, despite some eccentricities of repertoire and a certain obstinacy in the matter of new commissions. His own productions have included at least three of unforgettable quality. He... Read more... |
Best of 2017: OperaTuesday, 26 December 2017
It may not have been the best year for eye-popping productions; even visionary director Richard Jones fell a bit short with a tame-ish Royal Opera Bohème, though his non-operatic The Twilight Zone is something else. Instead there's been time to... Read more... |
From the House of the Dead, Welsh National Opera review - elderly staging, music comes up freshMonday, 09 October 2017
This week is Prison Week in the Christian Churches, and it would be nice, if fanciful, to think that WNO programmed their revival of Janáček’s From the House of the Dead with that in mind. More likely the thinking was that it fitted well enough into... Read more... |
Khovanshchina/Eugene Onegin, Welsh National Opera review - Russian revivals strong and weakMonday, 02 October 2017
About Khovanshchina I once had serious doubts. Leaving aside its unfinished condition, it always struck me as what Wagnerians would call a bleeding chunk of history, unstructured, confused, over-researched and dramaturgically obscure. Three recent... Read more... |
Der Rosenkavalier, Welsh National Opera review - hard to imagine a stronger castTuesday, 13 June 2017
Der Rosenkavalier, you might think, is one of those operas that belong in a specific place and time and no other. “In Vienna,” says Strauss's score, “in the first years of Maria Theresia’s reign” (i.e. the 1740s). But this, of course, is a... Read more... |
- 1 of 6
- ››
