Opera
David Nice
Recent events have prompted the assertion – understandable in Ukraine – that the idea of the Russian soul is a nationalist myth. This production reminded me that it isn’t, if only by telling us of what we’ve lost: the majority of those great Russian singers and conductors who lit up previous stagings of Tchaikovsky’s dark masterpiece.Though Jack Furness’s period-conscious concept – no violations pushed too far as in Stefan Herheim's Royal Opera horror – works beautifully with Tom Piper’s endlessly resourceful designs, Lizzie Powell’s lighting and Lucy Burge’s quirky choreography, the musical Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Thankfully, Julia Burbach’s version of The Flying Dutchman for Opera Holland Park doesn’t try to be one of those concept-laden productions that banishes all sight of the sea.Because last night the ocean – or rather its typical weather – came to us. A stiff south-westerly punched for hours across the awnings of the semi-open theatre’s canopy. Gale-force (well, almost) sound-effects partnered the City of London Sinfonia as its muscular brass summoned the sonic storm that opens Wagner’s breakthrough opera, and never quite let up.That said, Naomi Dawson’s set avoids any barnacled naturalism. Read more ...
David Nice
So here in Paris, as at Salzburg in 2022, it’s no longer “Puccini’s Trittico” but “the Asmik Grigorian Trittico 3-1-2”. Which would be a very bad idea if she were a lazy diva like Anna Netrebko. But Grigorian works selflessly within wonderfully strong casts. In league with Christof Loy’s viscerally demanding productions and Carlo Rizzi’s infinitely sympathetic conducting, she sets the seal on one of the greatest operatic events I’ve ever experienced.In recent years, having returned to the three masterpieces – in their totality probably Puccini’s supreme offering – in Zoom classes, I’ve found Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“Satan come to me!” The Devil doesn’t so much appear in David McVicar’s Faust as reveal himself to have always been there. We discover him – travelling trunk and brandy glass to hand, lazy smile on his lips – considering the interior of designer Charles Edwards’ magnificent church in Gounod’s own Second Empire Paris. And why not? This, after all, is his playground, not the rutting crowds of the Cabaret l’Enfer, the riotous drinkers, brawlers and hypocrites in the streets, or – in the screw-turning final reveal – the audience seated in the opera house itself: followers already all of his cause Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
With French baroque opera all but banished from the UK’s major opera companies, it’s left to concert halls and country houses to fill the void. There’s a full-length treat ahead this summer with Rameau’s opéra-ballet Les Indes Galantes at Hampshire’s Grange Festival, but first Temple Music served up an amuse-bouche from Christian Curnyn and his Early Opera Company.Before there was George Bernard Shaw (or My Fair Lady, for that matter) there was Rameau’s take on the myth of Pygmalion – the artist so in love with his own creation that she comes to life. The composer’s one-act opera is the Read more ...
David Nice
There’s a grail, but it doesn't glow in a mundane if perverted Christian ritual. Three of the main characters have young and old actor versions and the “wonder-working spear” is a knife in a Cain and Abel story superimposed on Wagner’s myth (as if that wasn’t complicated enough). Kundry, whom the composer defines as literally flying between “good” and “bad” worlds, enters primly in the first two acts bearing a tea-tray.Strong tableaux abound in young Dutch director Jetske Mijnssen’s production, Glyndebourne's first Parsifal, but they restrict to this world Wagner's sublime swansong score, Read more ...
Giulio Cesare, The English Concert, Bicket, Barbican review - 10s across the board in perfect Handel
David Nice
Is Giulio Cesare in Egitto, to give the full title, Handel’s best and shapeliest opera? Glyndebourne’s revival of the legendary David McVicar production last year made it seem so, not least thanks to the presence of two of last night’s soloists, Louise Alder as Cleopatra and Beth Taylor as Cornelia. Highlight of 2022 was the English Concert’s more sparely presented Serse. This concert Cesare from that stable lived up to both standards.Star billing in the Barbican’s publicity was national treasure Alder (pictured below with Meili Li), and not unreasonably so: Cleopatra’s pearl necklace of Read more ...
David Nice
Who doesn’t love the quirky, passionate and humanitarian genius of Leoš Janáček? All of it, these days. Since Charles Mackerras introduced the UK to a then-unknown, even the less familiar operas have had plenty of exposure. Simon Rattle was among the champions, giving an early concert performance (the UK premiere, I think) of the astonishing Osud (Fate). Now he's performing and recording them all with the London Symphony Orchestra.The Adventures of Mr Brouček to the Moon and to the 15th Century, the full title promising its true wackiness, has had two ENO productions, one at Grange Park Opera Read more ...
David Nice
Full marks to the Royal Opera for good planning: one first night knocking us all sideways with the darkest German operatic tragedy followed by another letting us off the hook with a short comedy by Wagner’s compatriot Telemann. The premiere of Pimpinone predates that of Die Walküre by nearly a century and a half and we mark its 300th anniversary this year. But is it too slight for resurrection?Initially I wondered. The first of Telemann’s three acts, each originally placed as an intermezzo within the composer’s adaptation of Handel’s opera seria Tamerlano for his polyglot city of Hamburg Read more ...
David Nice
Wagner’s universe, in the second of his Ring operas which brings semi-humans on board to challenge the gods, matches exaltation and misery, terror and tragedy – and throws down a gauntlet to singers, orchestra and director capable of going to extremes with due discipline.They did so masterfully last night, thanks above all to Royal Opera Conductor Laureate Antonio Pappano’s close relationship with four remarkable Wagnerian principals and Barrie Kosky’s dark, spare but always perceptive production, offering the revelation that any new Ring cycle has to provide."It's that woman again," declared Read more ...
Robert Beale
Opera North have recently pioneered a way of presenting some big works which they call “dramatic concert stagings”, performing in concert halls as well as theatres, with the orchestra on the platform behind the singers and a minimalist set, and the principals in present-day costumes symbolic of characters’ type.Some have had video projection as a backdrop, but it’s also been dispensable where necessary. This one has none, but the concept is much more than a concert performance and completely justified by its impact in theatrical terms.They’ve opened in St George’s Hall, Bradford, as an early Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Emotions run high at WNO these days. When the company’s co-directors, Sarah Crabtree and Adele Thomas, feel impelled to take to the stage at the end of the first night of Peter Grimes, in front of the entire company, chorus, orchestra and all, you know that matters have reached a pass that only a massive show of enthusiastic solidarity can hope to assuage.Enthusiasm there was in plenty: stamping and yelling, cheering and clapping from a packed house of opera-lovers young and old who plainly wanted it to be heard in the horrible Senned building next door that the Land of Song was still in good Read more ...