Opera
Michael Chance
Where to start? We at The Grange Festival began in mid-March (the 15th) with a letter to our company, all those few hundred who come and work for us during the festival months and who are all, almost without exception, employed on a freelance basis, warning of a likely cancellation but urging a commitment to stage the summer festival over June and July (with preparations stating in mid-April) if at all possible.And then we heard the shocking advice from Number 10 that all those over the age of 70 should stay isolated at home for at least three months. That was the announcement that told me we Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Russia came late to the coronavirus lockdown, and will be leaving early – this evening Vladimir Putin announced that national measures were coming to an end, though the disease still rages there. The country’s theatres were quick into action when the lockdown began, and throughout April and May have been offering plays, ballets and operas online. Publicity for these has been minimal, and English subtitles a rarity (there were none for this performance), but for those who could find them, and then struggle though the language barrier, they have provided a fascinating window on domestic Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Liberated from Pushkin’s salons, ballrooms and bedrooms, Barrie Kosky’s Eugene Onegin bursts out into nature. Tatyana and Olga lounge in the long grass stealing heavy fingerfuls of jam straight from the jar; party-guests run through the trees with flaming torches, dancing wildly, barefoot; after the harvest groups gather on the lawn with picnics and games. This is a world apart, the hot, hazy, endless summer of first love – an intense, but unreliable memory.First seen at Berlin’s Komische Oper in 2016, and later at the Edinburgh Festival, this turn-of-the-century Onegin with its echoes of DH Read more ...
David Nice
So many of the world's great opera singers inviting us to look through the keyhole at a carefully presented version of their lockdown lives over four very variable hours, such bad sound for the most part (Skype, like Zoom, catches the voice but loses the accompaniment). But that's not the point, nor would it be politic to pick out the few turkeys; these were all personable, supremely gifted human beings giving of their time and their artistry to raise money for New York's Metropolitan Opera (how the house has treated its artists and crew financially since lockdown is another matter altogether Read more ...
David Nice
Inventiveness waxes ever stronger, it seems, in quarantine, as do the number of faces and instrumental sounds gathered together at any one time. As the branches diversify, embracing pre-filmed concert and opera, solo and multiple livestreams from home, it made sense not to try and yoke all this together, and to give individual slots to each happening, from two innovative opera productions to a fabulous young cellist playing in his back garden. Opera North's Orchestra plays '2001' plusOrchestral get-togethers online have yielded some fascinating results, including the Lahti Symphony Read more ...
David Nice
A brutal Greek tragedy and a rococo Viennese comedy, both filtered through the eyes and ears of 20th century genius: what a feast on consecutive nights from the Metropolitan Opera's recent archive. There's been real thought behind the wealth of programming in the company's attempts to keep the world happy for free during lockdown, including a whole Wagner week. These two of the top masterpieces by Wagner's natural successor - "Richard the Third", as Strauss was dubbed, because there could be no second - both reminded us of what worked and what didn't when Robert Carsen's sort-of-1920s Read more ...
David Nice
Wagner's final drama, of learning, suffering and redemption through compassion, is second only to Bach's Passions at this time of year, and seems likely to strike a special note in the present crisis. Opera companies around the world, making much in their archives free to view right now, have served up the natural seasonal choice, and they have: there are at least nine choices right now, and they come from the expected centres of excellence including Berlin, Vienna, Munich, New York. Since it's unlikely that most of you would have the time or the patience for more than a few, and since the Read more ...
David Nice
One way to look at Stravinsky's celebrated collaboration with W H Auden and Chester Kallman is as a numbers opera in nine pictures, four of them indebted to Hogarth's series of paintings/prints. So it's not surprising that visual flair has marked out three significant productions: John Cox’s for Glyndebourne, “starring” David Hockney’s cross-hatched homage to Hogarth in 1975 and still going strong; Robert Lepage’s 1940s Hollywood tale in 2007; and, a decade later, this, Simon McBurney’s contemporary version first seen in Aix-en-Provence (but not so far in the UK, hence our gratitude to Read more ...
The Turn of the Screw, Opera North, OperaVision review - claustrophobic visions of terror and beauty
David Nice
Feeling stir-crazy right now? Imagine being confined to one room with a half-crazed housekeeper, two dysfunctional kids and two increasingly insistent ghosts, plagued by nightmares, unable even to get out into the garden or walk down to the lake. Such is the plight of the Governess in Alessandro Talevi's twice-revived production of The Turn of the Screw for Opera North, a slightly different one to that of Henry James's main narrator or the creation drawn from her by Britten and his librettist Myfanwy Piper. With them at least she can wander the Bly estate at will, though the ghosts go with Read more ...
David Nice
Only the birds will be singing at country opera houses around the UK this summer. Glyndebourne seems over-optimistic in declaring that it might be able to launch in July; other companies with shorter seasons have made the regretful but right decisions to call it a year. This reminder from 2017 of what such setups can achieve at the very highest level, newly downloaded on to the excellent OperaVision website, could hardly be more timely, nor the choice more uplifting for the soul: opera's greatest comedy, at a level of intimacy which the last major production to launch this year to date, Read more ...
David Nice
We're learning fast what works and what doesn't with online arts offerings in a time of coronavirus. A distinguished young pianist I know rightly pointed out to me yesterday that however good the artists sharing their talents with us from their living/music rooms, and however reassuring it is to be able to join them at a set time, bad sound cancels out most of the pleasure (though he didn’t rule out making an appearance himself). That's mostly not a problem with the opera companies around the world putting up their back catalogue of productions on film for free.The big guns are turning on Read more ...
David Nice
Two numbers, one hair-raising slice of music-theatre. When Sondheim's paying homage to the older, revue type of musical, you can extract a string of top hits: Follies, from which Marianka Swain chose "I'm Still Here" yesterday, could yield at least half a dozen more choices, Company almost as many. When his aim is a more through-composed kind of story-telling, with leading motifs recurring and transformed, "highlights" are less easily detached. Sweeney Todd (1979) was his first high watermark in that art, Into the Woods (1986) the next; later shows attempted a more minimalistic palette, with Read more ...