Opera Reviews
Cristina, Regina di Svezia, Chelsea Opera Group, Cadogan HallSunday, 09 November 2014
One queen is much like another in so-called “historical” Italian early to mid 19th-century opera. Elizabeth of England, Christina of Sweden, take your pick, they all fall for a tenor courtier who loves Another (the seconda donna, soprano or mezzo). With Donizetti, the musical drama is almost as disposable as the plot until a stonking number or two rolls up. Read more...
|
The Cunning Peasant, Guildhall SchoolThursday, 06 November 2014
Dvořák’s rustic operetta sits, swinging its legs rather diffidently, historically somewhere between the neverland Bohemia of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride and the lacerating reality of village life in Janáček'’s Jenůfa. The Cunning Peasant’s charms lie in its string of sophisticated songs and dances, more through-composed than Smetana’s, and in the abundance of not over-taxing roles, as well as chorus numbers, it offers to students. Read more... |
Levsha, Mariinsky Opera, Barbican HallWednesday, 05 November 2014
Of course unavoidable circumstances do strike, and concerts do get delayed, but it’s astonishing just how often those circumstances seem to conspire against Valery Gergiev. Last night’s UK premiere of Rodion Shchedrin’s opera Levsha – the second night of a Mariinsky triptych of performances at the Barbican – started a nice round hour late, which was a real shame because once the drama shifted from offstage to onstage the work revealed itself as a bit of a gem. Read more... |
Idomeneo, Royal OperaTuesday, 04 November 2014
God-sent sea monsters and divinely ordained human sacrifices don’t wash well with opera updated. The favoured contemporary take on the post-Trojan War myth of Mozart’s Idomeneo, which may even have originated in the last Covent Garden production 25 years ago by a fitfully brilliant Johannes Schaaf, has been to put a populace at risk from natural disaster and pestilence. Clearly the programme was expecting something of the sort, with its images of Hurricane Katrina. Read more... |
Betrothal in a Monastery, Maryinsky Opera, CardiffMonday, 03 November 2014
It’s one of the ironies of life and art that Prokofiev’s tenderest and most romantic opera was composed at a time when he was abandoning his wife in favour of a Moscow literature student half his age. Betrothal in a Monastery is a setting in Russian of an opera libretto by Sheridan about the attempt of a Spanish grandee to marry off his young daughter to an elderly fish merchant. Read more... |
La Bohème, English National OperaThursday, 30 October 2014
ENO may not always have matched the Royal Opera in the Great Puccini Voices stakes. But it's served up many of the classiest Mimìs, with Valerie Masterson, Mary Plazas and Elizabeth Llewellyn as top seamstresses. Californian former beauty queen Angel Blue, an acclaimed Musetta in the previous revival, now joins them. Read more... |
Wozzeck, BBCSSO, Runnicles, City Halls, GlasgowFriday, 24 October 2014
It takes a brave man to programme a single performance of Berg’s Wozzeck on a damp Thursday evening in Glasgow. But Donald Runnicles is such a man. In his five years at the helm of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra he has proved adept at making the implausible possible, and turning the ordinary into something extraordinary. Read more... |
Life on the Moon, English Touring OperaSaturday, 18 October 2014
You may be more familiar with the Italian title, Il mondo della luna, but chances are you won’t have seen this or any of Haydn’s other 16 operas. You haven’t missed much, at least until the last of his works as court composer to the Esterházy family, Armida, an "heroic drama" rather than the slim comedies which don’t seem to have inspired the composer to the heights of his symphonies and string quartets. Read more... |
The Marriage of Figaro, English National OperaFriday, 17 October 2014
To take Figaro – the ultimate operatic assault on class distinctions and social hierarchies – and set it on a giant revolve is a gesture as wilful as it is elegant. Not only are divisions of above and below-stairs dissolved in this steadily circling world, but also those of background and foreground, onstage and offstage. Read more... |
I Due Foscari, Royal OperaWednesday, 15 October 2014
First the good news. At 73, is Plácido Domingo anywhere near retiring? Er, no. When the question came up in an interview on Sunday (on video below), he answered : "The reason I don't retire is because I can still sing." And then with a glint in his eye: "I still feel I have to know the the right moment. Not to sing one day more.... nor one day less." Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Parsifal, Glyndebourne review - the music flies up, the dram...
There’s a grail, but it doesn't glow in a mundane if perverted Christian ritual. Three of the main characters have young and old actor versions...
Mr Swallow: Show Pony, Richmond Theatre review - magic trick...
Nick Mohammed invented his Mr Swallow character – camp, lisping, with an inflated ego and the mistaken belief that he has creative...
The Bombing of Pan Am 103, BBC One review - new dramatisatio...
The appalling destruction of Pan Am’s flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 was put under the spotlight in January this year in Sky Atlantic’s ...
Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works, Royal Ballet review - th...
Ballet is hardly a stranger to Broadway. Until the late 1950s every other musical had its fantasy ballet sequence – think Cyd Charisse in ...
Album: Robert Forster - Strawberries
“Tell me what you see” invites Robert Forster during Strawberries' “Tell it Back to me.” The album’s eight songs do not, however,...
Music Reissues Weekly: Chapterhouse - White House Demos
Quoted in an early music press article on his band Chapterhouse, singer-guitarist Stephen Patman said their ambition was “to have our records on...
Songlines Encounters, Kings Place review - West African and...
Songlines Encounters is your round-the-world ticket to great...
The Deep Blue Sea, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - Tamsin G...
The water proves newly inviting in The Deep Blue Sea, Terence Rattigan's mournful 1952 play that some while ago established its status as...
The Brightening Air, Old Vic review - Chekhov jostles Conor...
It's one thing to be indebted to a playwright, as Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter have been at different times to Beckett, or Sondheim's latest...