Opera Buzz
Henze attends his own ElegyTuesday, 11 May 2010![]()
Many of us younger opera-goers have never had a chance until now to see Hans Werner Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers in action. Read more... |
Wainwright's Prima Donna IS Anna RussellFriday, 09 April 2010Those of us who shied away from the Manchester world premiere of Rufus Wainwright's first opera, Prima Donna, last year are biting our nails about the first London performance at Sadler's Wells Theatre on Monday. Fond as we are of some masterly songs on his albums, we wonder if he's boxing above his weight in indulging his love of opera... and in French, too (OK, he grew up speaking it, but even so, it's pretentious French for English-speaking audiences). This evening,... Read more... |
Royal Opera House hits low noteMonday, 05 April 2010![]()
As anyone on the Royal Opera House's mailing list will no doubt be aware, today is the first day you can book for the new season. In theory. |
1954 Cunning Little VixenFriday, 19 March 2010![]()
Filmed extracts of a fantastically vivid 1954 production of Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen have been unearthed by the great blogger Doundou Tchil of Classical Iconoclast. Václav Neumann is the conductor; Berlin's Komische Oper is the house. Whets the appetite for tonight's Bill Bryden revival production at Covent Garden. Hard to imagine the...
Read more...
|
New World theme for Edinburgh International Festival 2010Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Jonathan Mills has announced the programme for Edinburgh International Festival 2010, on a theme of modern culture in the New Worlds of the Americas and Australasia. Read more... |
Irina awaits the SpringThursday, 18 February 2010
The redoubtable and always stylish Russian mezzo-soprano Irina Arkhipova, who died a week ago at the age of 85, still has a song to sing about the prolonged winter we're enduring. Among many roles in which she plunged in true Slavic fashion to contralto depths was that of the shepherd-boy Lel in Rimsky-Korsakov's Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden). This "Spring fairy-tale" is about how we're destined to carry on shivering until the Snow Maiden, daughter of Frost and Spring,... Read more... |
Lawyers and LibrettiTuesday, 16 February 2010![]()
Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first: if a law firm is going to put on an opera, it should probably be Gilbert & Sullivan’s Trial by Jury. Instead, having progressed through G&S’s Mikado and Pirates of Penzance in previous years, Magic Circle firm Allen & Overy last weekend staged The Magic Flute, and not just anywhere, but at Glyndebourne. The house which has resounded to Peter Pears and Felicity Lott this time was filled by... Read more... |
BBC joins opera talent huntMonday, 25 January 2010
The BBC launched today its own popular opera talent hunt (details below), while ITV's Popstar to Operastar has suffered heavy critical attack and disappointing public ratings. The BBC's Commissioning Editor for Music and Events, Jan Younghusband, added a private comment to... Read more... |
theartsdesk an essential site of 2009: BBC Radio 5 LiveFriday, 01 January 2010
|
Boxing Day Bloat: theartsdesk recommendsSaturday, 26 December 2009![]()
The morning after the day before has dawned. If you're not inclined to join the shopping queues, theartsdesk is happy to suggest alternatives. Our writers recommend all sorts of cultural things you could get up to in the next week. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...

On its own, the second session The Lurkers recorded for the BBC’s John Peel show on 18 April 1978 is arguably a curio, a footnote. Four tracks of...

When a piece of music is heard for the first time ever, there’s always the delicious hope that, just by being there, an audience might witness...

Drained as they are at present of crucial funds, WNO are managing to...

Taking on some of the contingent, nebulous quality of its subject, Jacqueline Feldman’s ...

We live in tragic times given over to cataclysmic events that require outsized emotions in return. That may be one reason to account for the...

Perhaps all great music counterpoints and comments on the times, but Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra have been searingly...

“You know what they say: where there’s livestock, there’s dead stock,” says Jack (a brilliant Barry Keoghan). Never a truer word. There’s an awful...