Opera Reviews
Orlando, La Nuova Musica, SJSS review - Handel painted in primary coloursFriday, 02 February 2018
The advertising for La Nuova Musica’s Orlando billed it as “Handel’s most psychologically complex opera”. Whether or not you agree (and there are plenty of heavyweight rivals – Alcina, Giulio Cesare and Agrippina just for starters) there’s also the issue that it’s only half the story. Read more...
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Das Rheingold, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - orchestral revelations, but cursing Alberich trumps wooden WotanSunday, 28 January 2018
Vladmir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra have been to the bottom of the Rhine before, but in 2015 only did a whistlestop tour of the rest of Rheingold's terrain with an extensive array of excerpts. Read more... |
BBCSO, Pons, Barbican review - love hurts in vivid Spanish double billSaturday, 20 January 2018
This was an evening of Iberian highways re-travelled, but with a difference. At the beginning of 2016, the centenary of Spanish master Enrique Granados's untimely death, two young pianists at the National Gallery shared the two piano suites that make up the original Goyescas; finally last night at the Barbican we got the opera partly modelled on their deepest movements. Read more... |
The Return of Ulysses, Royal Opera, Roundhouse review - musical drama trumps dodgy stagecraftThursday, 11 January 2018
The power of music solves every problem, at least when as bewitchingly performed as it was here. Read more... |
Salome, Royal Opera review – lurid staging still packs a punchTuesday, 09 January 2018
David McVicar may seem too gentle a soul for the lurid drama of Strauss's Salome, but his production, here returning to Covent Garden for a third revival, packs a punch. Read more... |
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review – maturity from teenage playersSaturday, 06 January 2018
Seventy years old and still imbued with youthful flair and enthusiasm – that’s the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, which pioneered new territory in its first concert of 2018 last night. The flair and enthusiasm also apply to Sir Mark Elder, who conducted the event. Read more... |
Best of 2017: OperaTuesday, 26 December 2017
It may not have been the best year for eye-popping productions; even visionary director Richard Jones fell a bit short with a tame-ish Royal Opera Bohème, though his non-operatic The Twilight Zone is something else. Instead there's been time to reflect on what makes a true... Read more... |
Cendrillon, RNCM, Manchester review - magic and spectacleFriday, 15 December 2017
The Royal Northern College of Music’s production of Massenet’s Cendrillon has a particularly strong professional production team, and it shows. This is one of the most attractively spectacular operas the college has mounted for years. Read more... |
Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci, Royal Opera review - one tenor, two samey brutesMonday, 04 December 2017
Are "Cav and Pag" inseparable? Clearly not, to judge from Opera North's "Little Greats" and elsewhere, but it's still the pairing of choice. Tricky, because as music-theatre, Leoncavallo's drama of rough life entwined with rough art stands high above Mascagni's Sicilian village shenanigans, despite great scenes and numbers in both. Read more... |
I, Object review - this operatic double-bill delivers just a single hitSaturday, 02 December 2017
A comma divides the title of this opera double-bill in two, but the works paired here (Michael Nyman’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Kate Whitley’s Unknown Position) each explore what happens when you take it away – when natural divisions, between human and object, self and other, perception and reality are dissolved, dismantled or elided. Read more... |
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