Opera Reviews
Der Freischütz, Bavarian State Opera online review – marksmen as marketeersMonday, 15 February 2021
Bavarian State Opera has led the way for live performances and associated broadcasts during the pandemic. Their series of weekly “Montagsstück” events have presented innovative chamber operas, specifically for web streaming. Their next goal is full-size opera with a live audience. That is not possible yet, so instead they are premiering a new production of Weber’s Der Freischütz. Read more... |
Hansel and Gretel, Scottish Opera online - bewitching feast for ears but not eyesFriday, 12 February 2021
Christmas isn’t just for Christmas, Daisy Evans’s bargain-basement fir-trees-and-tinsel production of Humperdinck’s evergreen masterpiece seems to be telling us. Read more... |
Netrebko, Met Stars Live in Concert online review - flashy performance from operatic powerhouseTuesday, 09 February 2021
Though the global pandemic has brought about an unprecedented degree of isolation, it’s also, in unusual ways, brought us together too. Visiting New York’s Metropolitan Opera House is currently an impossible dream - the house is still completely dark. Read more... |
The Turn of the Screw, OperaGlass Works online review - the fright is in the filmingTuesday, 02 February 2021
It’s second time lucky for OperaGlass Works, whose previous production at Wilton’s Music Hall, of Stravinsky’s The Rake's Progress, hit the mark for me in the singing but not the staging. I suspect that had we been there in the auditorium with performers all too palpable, the same might have been true of The Turn of the Screw in this venue. Read more... |
Holy Sonnets/The Heart's Assurance/A Charm of Lullabies, English Touring Opera online review - darkest hoursFriday, 29 January 2021
“Death, be not proud, though some have called thee/ Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.” John Donne’s Holy Sonnets may summon all his art of wit and paradox to mock that might and dread; still, we sense the abject terror behind the formal acrobatics of the verse. Benjamin Britten wrote his great settings of these great poems after a visit to the liberated Bergen-Belsen camp with Yehudi Menuhin in summer 1945. Read more... |
Romances on British Poetry / The Poet's Echo, English Touring Opera online review - Britten and Shostakovich in a double mirrorTuesday, 26 January 2021
A darkened stage; a pool of light; a solitary figure. And then, flooding the whole thing with meaning, music – even it’s just a soft chord on a piano. It’s no secret to any opera goer that even the barest outlines of a staging can magnify the dramatic potential of a piece of music to a point when it can seem like a completely new work. Read more... |
Best of 2020: OperaSunday, 27 December 2020
Surreal fantasy came off best this year, before and after the fall. Read more... |
Royal Opera Christmas Concert online review – pajama party around the Nutcracker treeThursday, 24 December 2020
So Hansel and Gretel can’t cuddle up together in the dark forest, Musetta doesn’t fall into long-suffering lover Marcello’s arms and there’s no audience to play to (as there would have been three days earlier). Read more... |
Pagliacci, Opera Ensemble, Longborough review - stripped down but liveMonday, 21 December 2020
List all the problems that the pandemic places in the way of operatic performance, and you might well end up wondering why anyone would bother. Read more... |
Così fan tutte, Scottish Opera online review - wit and deception in an empty theatreMonday, 14 December 2020
For its latest production, unveiled on Sunday evening but recorded in November, Scottish Opera toys playfully with the absurdities of Covid-compliant performance practice. But maybe sensing our weariness with the whole business, it is not overdone. Read more... |
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