Opera Reviews
Prom 31 review: La Damnation de Faust, Gardiner - Berlioz tumbles out in rainbow coloursWednesday, 09 August 2017
The road to hell is paved with brilliant ideas in Berlioz's idiosyncratic take on the Faust legend. Read more...
|
Prom 29 review: BBCSO, Bychkov - Musorgsky's Khovanshchina sears in concertMonday, 07 August 2017
"Ura!" as soldiers cry in Russian epic opera's last fling, Prokofiev's War and Peace: supertitles have arrived at the Proms, after much special pleading here and elsewhere. Read more... |
La clemenza di Tito, Glyndebourne review - fine musical manoeuvres in the darkThursday, 27 July 2017
So much light in the Glyndebourne production of Brett Dean's Hamlet; so much darkness in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito according to director Claus Guth. Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Clonter Opera review - a wedding full of future starsMonday, 24 July 2017
Clonter Opera is a finishing school for young opera performers, with its own well appointed theatre and professional administration and artistic direction, based on a farm in Cheshire near Jodrell Bank. It’s seen a succession of promising young post-conservatoire singers come to perform in fully staged productions for many years, and is also (from an audience point of view) the only countryside summer opera venue of any substance in the north of England. Read more... |
Prom 9 review: Fidelio, BBCPO, Mena - classy prison drama rarely blazesSaturday, 22 July 2017
What a pity Beethoven never composed an appendage to Fidelio called The Sorrows of Young Marzelline. One crucial moment apart, the music he gives to his second soprano in his only opera isn't his best, but Louise Alder so lived the role of the gaoler's daughter in love with a woman disguised as a man that everything else felt rather less intense. It's only fair to say that there were... Read more... |
Jette Parker Young Artists Summer Performance, Royal Opera review - vocal promise, poor stagecraftTuesday, 18 July 2017
They get to work with the best music and language coaches in the business. They make their mark in small parts throughout the Royal Opera season and showcase their art more prominently at the end of it, proving to the world that there are major talents among them (four outstanding ones, I reckon, on this showing). Read more... |
Katya Kabanova, Opera Holland Park review - clarity and pace in Janáček's Volga tragedyMonday, 17 July 2017
Katya Kabanova is an ideal fit for Opera Holland Park’s verismo-focussed programming. It’s Czech, of course, but the dramatic style is very close to the Italian opera of the day, the story all gritty realism, the music punctuated with intense emotive episodes. This staging, a revival of Olivia Fuchs’s 2009 production, does the work full justice, a straightforward account that doesn’t overcomplicate the clear-cut narrative and morality. Read more... |
El-Khoury, Spyres, Hallé, Rizzi, Cadogan Hall review - bel canto lives againSaturday, 15 July 2017
Unless you're an undiscriminating fan of bel canto, the lesser Italian and French operas of the 1830s and '40s - that's to say, not Verdi's Nabucco and Macbeth or Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini - need to be approached with caution. Once you've lowered expectations to a simpler level of compositional style, you then have to hope for stylists of the first order to make it work. That doesn't happen too often these days, but the inspirational company Opera Rara,... Read more... |
The Magic Flute, Longborough Festival review - sparkling and movingFriday, 14 July 2017
About The Magic Flute there’s a certain amount of domestic theatre and a great deal of pantomime. It calls for fun, sentiment, movement, a measure of spectacle, and plenty of direct communication with the audience. But like the mechanicals’ play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream it needs no excuse, no big ideas. Read more... |
Buxton Festival review - early Verdi, earlier Mozart and refreshing BrittenMonday, 10 July 2017
“The subject is neither political nor religious; it is fantastical” wrote Verdi to the librettist Piave about his opera Macbeth. “The opera is not about the rise of a modern fascist: nor is it about political tyranny. Read more... |
Pages
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 10,000 pieces, we're asking for £2.95 per month or £25 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take an annual subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
latest in today
Prom 46 review: Gurrelieder, LSO, Rattle - gorgeous colours,...
From sunset to sunrise, across aeons of time, usually flashes by in Schoenberg's polystylistic epic. Not last night at the...
Omar Robert Hamilton: The City Always Wins review - Egypt...
A few days ago we learned that British taxpayers have unwittingly donated around £1m. in aid to the police and court systems of Egypt’s military...
Reissue CDs Weekly: Blancmange
The Some Bizzare Album was released in January 1981. Compiled by DJ Stevo, it featured twelve unsigned acts he felt represented a fresh...
CD: Portico Quartet - Art In The Age Of Automation
It seems quite a shock to consider that it’s now ten years since Portico Quartet’s breakthrough album Knee-Deep In The North Sea was...
Against, Almeida Theatre review - Ben Whishaw is a modern-da...
Luke is a Silicon Valley billionaire, a high-tech wizard. And he’s just had a message from God. And what...
CD: Mogwai - Every Country's Sun
Mogwai’s ability to create both frighteningly intense and gorgeously understated compositions has led to them being one of post-...
Edinburgh Festival and Fringe 2017 reviews round-up
Wondering what on earth to choose between as you tramp the streets of the festival? These are our highlights so far.
STANDUP...
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power review - Al Gore...
When An Inconvenient Truth won the best...
