Opera Reviews

Xerxes, Longborough Opera

stephen Walsh Sunday, 26 July 2015

One hardly expects operas about historical figures to bother much with the actual facts of their lives. But Handel’s Xerxes must nevertheless rank as an extreme case. Instead of bridging the Hellespont and invading Greece with a million men – a campaign mentioned in passing as if it were some minor business trip – Xerxes spends his time philandering with his brother’s intended and generally creating emotional mayhem in the Persian court.

Saul, Glyndebourne

alexandra Coghlan Friday, 24 July 2015

I can’t remember a time I felt so profoundly disquieted by a Handel staging. It’s partly that, as an oratorio, Saul breaks so many dramatic rules that lend the operas their reassuring structural certainty, but there’s also something – a tenderness certainly, but also a violence – to Barrie Kosky’s production that uncouples the music from any residual cosiness England’s favourite adopted composer still inspires in British audiences.

Comment

Lakmé, Opera Holland Park

David Nice Friday, 10 July 2015

Operatic hit parades have always been subject to fashion. For people of my parents’ generation, the famous number from Delibes’s Lakmé was the heroine’s coloratura Bell Song, immortalised at the movies by Lily Pons and Kathryn Grayson. Now it’s the Flower Duet, courtesy of British Airways. But there are other numbers equally worthy of attention in a glorious score stockpiled with the kind of thing the French call la mélodie eternelle.

Rigoletto, Longborough Festival

stephen Walsh Thursday, 09 July 2015

The gable end of Martin Graham’s converted barn opera-house at Longborough is surmounted by statues of three composers: pride of place, not surprisingly, to Wagner – the festival’s raison d’être – and with Verdi and Mozart on either side.

Falstaff, Royal Opera

David Nice Tuesday, 07 July 2015

It may only be a revival, but this is what the Royal Opera does best, above all in fielding a living legend of a Falstaff for Verdi's last masterpiece who’d probably be beyond the pockets of many other houses. Italian baritone, masterchef and filmstar Ambrogio Maestri is flanked by a good ensemble including two of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme’s finest graduates, with top orchestral standards for Verdi's most elaborate score under the perfectly-pacing Danish conductor Michael...

The Rape of Lucretia, Glyndebourne

stephen Walsh Monday, 06 July 2015

Britten’s first chamber opera is very much a Glyndebourne piece; its world premiere in the old festival theatre in July 1946 was also the festival’s inaugural post-war production. It brought into being the English Opera Group, and led soon afterwards to the foundation of the Aldeburgh Festival. So it’s good, in principle at least, to have it back on the main stage here, after an initial airing on tour in 2013.

Albert Herring, Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

alexandra Coghlan Friday, 03 July 2015

Some of the best nights of opera to be had in London come courtesy of students. It’s not something we talk enough about, possibly because, with four major music colleges in the city, the quality is so high that the performers can (and are) judged as professionals. The Royal College of Music’s Albert Herring is up there with the best of them – an ensemble show bursting with character, detail, wit and an abundance of joy.

Guillaume Tell, Royal Opera

David Nice Tuesday, 30 June 2015

There are two operatic types who should leave Rossini’s epic swansong for the stage well alone. One would usually be a conductor who ignores many of the notes written by a master at the height of his powers, since even the least dramatic numbers have musical idiosyncrasy in them. Antonio Pappano still omits, among other things, Rossini’s superb Mozartian canon-trio for women's voices and wind ensemble; but what he does conduct is so focused and shapely that he must be forgiven.

Pappano's Classical Voices, BBC Four

Marina Vaizey Monday, 29 June 2015

Antonio Pappano, artistic director and chief conductor of the Royal Opera House, is a polymath, for he is also a brilliant and persuasive narrator of the history of music. Here he embarked on a four part history of the operatic voice, starting at the very top – or how to reach those high Cs, the Everest for the soprano.

Comment

Death in Venice, Garsington Opera

David Nice Monday, 22 June 2015

Lagoon, miasma and scirocco may seem as far away as you can get from the rolling hills and pleasant airs of the Wormsley Estate in deepest home counties territory. Nor are the bleached bones of Britten’s bleak if ultimately transformative operatic swansong the usual culinary fare many punters might have expected to go with their fine wines and gourmet picnics.