Opera Reviews

Tannhäuser, Royal Opera

Gavin Dixon Wednesday, 27 April 2016

Tim Albery’s 2010 production of Wagner's Tannhäuser is back for a revival at Royal Opera, featuring a different conductor and a nearly new cast, with one notable exception. The production itself is serviceable, visually coherent and with plenty of atmosphere. The sets, by Michael Levine begin with a replica of the Covent Garden proscenium arch in the Venusberg scene, which is then shown in progressive states of decay in the following acts.

Comment

Don Giovanni / Pia de' Tolomei, English Touring Opera

Richard Bratby Monday, 25 April 2016

The curtain is up for the overture to English Touring Opera’s new production of Don Giovanni, but no-one is on stage. Instead, we gaze at Anna Fleischle’s set: a creation in two layers. On the top, elegant Klimt panels glint with gold. Below, and joined to the opulence above by a rickety looking metal fire escape, is a Piranesi-like underworld of drab brick, archways and mysteriously curving passages – perfect for lurking or throwing sinister shadows.

Shakespeare 400 Gala, LPO, Jurowski, RFH

David Nice Sunday, 24 April 2016

Every year is Shakespeare year in theatre, opera house and concert hall. An anniversary's best, though, for those select few galas where the mind's made flexible by constant comparison between different Shakespearean worlds.

Jenůfa, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Bělohlávek, RFH

David Nice Tuesday, 19 April 2016

Janáček's lacerating music-drama of love-led sin and redemption in a 19th century Moravian village is the opera I'd recommend as the first port of call for theatregoers wary of the genre. Its emotional truths are unflinching, its lyricism as constantly surprising as the actions of its characters are often swift and violent. In the opera house, I've never seen a performance that didn't turn its audience inside out.

Rusalka, Scottish Opera

Christopher Lambton Friday, 15 April 2016

For the gentleman next to me in the Festival Theatre, this was his second outing to see Rusalka. At the production premiere earlier this month in Glasgow, he had been “blown away” by Dvořák's lyric masterpiece. Given half a chance, I would go back to Edinburgh for the second and last performance in this run; not only because this is a brilliant, beautifully judged performance, but also because the opportunity might never come again.

Lucia di Lammermoor, Royal Opera

alexandra Coghlan Friday, 08 April 2016

Lucia di Lammermoor is an opera in which men spend an awful lot of time talking about women, and very little actually talking to them. (Which, if nothing else, ensures a rather more dramatic denouement than a frank conversation about everyone’s hopes and dreams would produce.) Enter director Katie Mitchell and her “strong feminist agenda”, determined to give Donizetti’s women back their voices, and with them the agency every plot twist in the opera conspires to deny.

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The Importance of Being Earnest, Royal Opera, Barbican

David Nice Wednesday, 30 March 2016

Some new operas worth their salt work a slow, sophisticated charm, but the handful that holler "masterpiece" grab you from the start and don't let go.

Written on Skin, Barbican

alexandra Coghlan Sunday, 20 March 2016

You learn a lot about an opera in concert. Free from directorial and design intervention, the music can and must do it all. What is good is amplified, and what’s weak exposed. When that score is as psychologically rich and texturally varied as George Benjamin’s Written on Skin, the clarity of a concert performance can actually feel like a gain rather than a loss.

Boris Godunov, Royal Opera

David Nice Tuesday, 15 March 2016

Russian bells and spinning tops dominate Richard Jones's predictably unpredictable take on Musorgsky's saga of a conscience-stricken Tsar. Latter-day purism tends to insist on the composer's seven-scene 1869 original – possibly for economic more than artistic reasons – and this two-hour-plus, interval-free whizz through seven years of Russian history is the most faithful to the first score I've heard.

Ariodante, Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

alexandra Coghlan Wednesday, 09 March 2016

The London Handel Festival is back, and instead of ploughing their usual furrow of rarely-seen works, this year’s opera is a classic. If the rest of Ariodante doesn’t quite live up to the promise of its two often-excerpted arias (“Dopo Notte” and “Scherza Infida”), then it’s still a deeply satisfying evening of music, with a large cast perfect for showing off the talents of the Royal College of Music’s student performers.