opera directors
La Traviata, Opera NorthSunday, 21 September 2014
You’d expect a regional opera company to focus on the core repertoire in these economically challenging times. Happily, Opera North’s La traviata is a new staging and not a weary revival. Alessandro Talvi’s production doesn’t take many risks and... Read more... |
Alright on the Night: at Glyndebourne with the OAESaturday, 09 August 2014
If you only ever listened to opera from recordings, you might overlook the fact that it's as much theatre as it is music. In the opera house on the night, it's all well and good for the orchestra to play the score and the singers to sing their parts... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Buxton: Dvořák rarity, Gluck tercentenaryMonday, 14 July 2014
Buxton has gone Bohemian, digging into Dvořák’s treasure trove and celebrating Gluck’s tercentenary. The choice of Dvořák’s The Jacobin fits the Buxton Festival tradition of rooting out neglected works, since this has been unjustly overlooked since... Read more... |
The Barber of Seville, Longborough FestivalFriday, 04 July 2014
Speaking from the stage before curtain-up on The Barber, Longborough’s founder and chairman, Martin Graham, stressed the hard work put in by director Richard Studer and conductor Jonathan Lyness on their two 2014 productions, this one and Tosca. He... Read more... |
Ariadne auf Naxos, Royal OperaThursday, 26 June 2014
Can it really be 12 years since Antonio Pappano inaugurated his transformative era as the Royal Opera’s Music Director conducting Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos? Christof Loy’s production seemed so radical at the time. We were put off our guard by... Read more... |
Don Quichotte, Grange Park OperaTuesday, 24 June 2014
Grange Park Opera has a strong penchant for French repertoire, and has been valiant, consistent and highly imaginative in presenting it ever since 1998, when Wasfi Kani and Michael Moody first started inviting opera-goers to the unique setting of a... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Lyon: Britten FêtedFriday, 23 May 2014
“Assez vu” (“seen enough”) is the first line of Benjamin Britten’s last Rimbaud setting in his electric song cycle Les Illuminations. Victor Hugo and Paul Verlaine had been the objects of his 14-year old attention in the Quatre Chansons françaises;... Read more... |
Mark Wigglesworth for ENOThursday, 23 January 2014
This is great news. It should have been great news back in 2006-7, when Wigglesworth – Mark, not to be confused with the young, photogenic Ryan, composer and, when I last saw him, barely competent baton-wielder - was among the contenders for the... Read more... |
Manon, Royal OperaWednesday, 15 January 2014
Massenet had just two lingering thoughts about Manon when he wrote his memoirs in 1910, a quarter-century after the opera's first performance. First, he enjoyed reminding himself how many times it had been performed (a staggering 763 by the... Read more... |
Patrice Chéreau, 1944-2013: a partial viewTuesday, 08 October 2013
It has to be partial, because out of the 10 opera productions from the iconoclastic French actor-director, who died yesterday of lung cancer at the age of 68, I’ve seen but two, on screen only – but a big two at that – and only three of his 11 films... Read more... |
Die Fledermaus, English National OperaTuesday, 01 October 2013
Rich, racy, randy and irreverent: such were the R words gathered up by a Canadian critic to capture the essence of Christopher Alden’s production of Johann Strauss’s cork-popping operetta when it premiered in Toronto last year. Other R words, alas,... Read more... |
Interview: Serge Dorny of Opéra de LyonSaturday, 03 August 2013
A lot has changed in the 10 years since Serge Dorny arrived at Lyon Opera. Attendance in a supposedly dying art form has risen to 96 per cent, and no charges of elitism or unfashionable nostalgia have deterred the 25 per cent of Lyon’s... Read more... |
