Glyndebourne
David Nice
It’s what you dream of in opera but don’t often get: singers feeling free and liberated to give their best after weeks of preparation with a master conductor. Glyndebourne Music Director Robin Ticciati leads the way with a peerless London Philharmonic Orchestra in Bizet’s absolute masterpiece, and Tunisian-Canadian mezzo Rihab Chaieb’s Carmen stuns in a vocally magnificent cast.Better still if everything else aligns, as it did in Irish National Opera’s recent L’Olimpiade. Not quite so much here, given a production by Tony award winner Diane Paulus which tells the story for the most part – a Read more ...
theartsdesk
As a human being of immense warmth, humour and erudition, Andrew Davis made it all too easy to forget what towering, incandescent performances he inspired. Now is a good time to recall those properly to mind, to listen to his huge discography, and to assess his proper place among the top conductors – again, as one of such versatility and range that, to adapt what Danny Meyer writes below, he might have been labelled a jack of all trades when he was a master of all.The range of tributes here reminds me both what an extraordinarily fine interpreter of operas he was – respected at Glyndebourne Read more ...
David Nice
Choosing a limited best seems almost meaningless when even simply the seven operatic experiences I've relished in the run-up to Christmas (nothing seasonal) deserve a place in the sun. But in a year which has seen Arts Council devastation versus brilliant business as usual where possible, English National Opera – faced with “Manchester or die” – needs the first shout-out for doing everything the moneygivers want it to.That came in the shape of Jeanine Tesori's Blue, with a powerful, unpreachy libretto by Tazewell Thompson, its very originally shaped drama of a young American Black boy Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
It never rains but it pours – and hails, snows or, above all, thunders. The presiding tone of Semele, in Adele Thomas’s new production for Glyndebourne, matches the current English summer with its grey skies, glowering clouds and stormy outbursts. Jove’s evidently in a rage, despite his rejuvenating lust for the Theban king’s daughter, Semele. He’s not the only one: the first of many lightning-bolts – designed by Peter Mumford with Rick Fisher – that flash around Annemarie Woods’s crepusular set illuminate lonely Juno, spurned and seething spouse of the heavenly overlord. Her dogged quest for Read more ...
David Nice
Harrowing and holiness alternate in Poulenc’s unique masterpiece, nominally an opera about nuns during the French revolution, at a deeper level a music-drama about the greatest disturbances in the human condition. Glyndebourne’s cast, conductor and orchestra handle the variety wth total mastery. If Barrie Kosky’s production lets horror overwhelm us, that’s justified too. If you’re not a heap at the end of it, that’s your problem.Kosky’s classic Handel Saul at Glyndebourne descended from flowery opulence to dust and ashes. His Dialogues starts with explosive dread against Katrin Lea Tag’s Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Why stage Don Giovanni in a post #MeToo world? That’s the question most frequently being asked about Mariame Clément’s new production for Glyndebourne and on its opening night she delivered a response that was as conceptually subtle as it was visually flamboyant.Together with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment – conducted with flair and vigour by Evan Rogister – she teased out the contradictions and paradoxes that define not just Mozart’s flawed Bacchanalian anti-hero but those who surround him. Today we have cancel culture – back then they had hell – and it’s a tribute to Clément Read more ...
Soraya Mafi
Anyone concerned about making the arts accessible regardless of where they live should be concerned by the recent announcement from Glyndebourne that it’s having to cease touring across England.That painful decision, and Welsh National Opera’s announcement that it can no longer visit Liverpool with immediate effect, are the inevitable result of Arts Council England’s baffling decision to cut funding to both companies while simultaneously talking of ‘”levelling up” and supporting the arts outside of London.Like many British opera singers, I was introduced to the art form by a touring company. Read more ...
David Nice
The sopranos are Ethiopian-Italian and Hispanic-American, the tenor Uzbek, the baritones South African (no EU principals, but it seems you can't have everything). This is opera at its best: the cream of international singers coming together to make a unified work of art under a director with a vision and a conductor who gives it all total security as well as freedom. It may be the tour, but it’s vintage Glyndebourne.Floris Visser’s concentrated take on Puccini’s note-perfect La bohème, revived here by Simon Iorio, premiered in the main festival earlier this year; Miranda Heggie Read more ...
Sara and Jeremy Eppel
Like the beacons saving ships from the Cornish rocks in Ethel Smyth’s opera, The Wreckers, which opened this year’s Glyndebourne Festival, the Sussex opera house has itself become a beacon of more environmentally sustainable opera. In 2021, with the COP 26 Climate Change Conference raising the profile of businesses’ efforts to cut their carbon emissions, Glyndebourne was a pioneer among opera houses and joined the global Race to Zero.Building on the work started a decade ago with the installation of a wind turbine, and thanks to the leadership of Gus Christie (Executive Chairman) and Sarah Read more ...
David Nice
“Variety is the spice of life! Vive la difference!,” chirrups the ensemble at the end of this giddying double bill. And there could hardly be more singular variety acts than a potential suicide at the end of a phone line, a woman who lets her breasts fly away and grows a beard, and a husband who breeds 40,049 children on his own.Favourite Glyndebourne Director Laurent Pelly has gift-wrapped Poulenc’s two one-act one-offs with intelligence, verve and visual brilliance - which in the first case means semi-darkness, in the second all the colours of the rainbow - and conductor Robin Ticciati Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Reviewing the Grange Festival production of Tamerlano the other day, I noted the difficulty Handel poses the modern director with his byzantine plots and often ludicrous love tangles, expressed through music of surpassing brilliance but mostly stereotyped forms. But at least Tamerlano is a comprehensible story with its feet planted firmly in a sort of reality. In Alcina earthbound reality is hardly anywhere to be seen. We are on a magic island ruled by the enchantress of the title, who disposes of her many lovers by turning them into wild beasts or rocks, trees or rivers. Bradamante Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
According to the programme, La bohème is (probably) the most performed opera, by the most performed operatic composer. Ever. So, what is it about this piece that continues to enthral, inspire and intrigue artists and audiences alike?Perhaps it’s that the characters – a group of young Parisians in the mid 19th century – are so relatable to so many, regardless of age, class or nationality. Or perhaps it’s the nostalgic pining for youth that seems to echo throughout the piece (Puccini was nearly 40 by the time he finished composing the work). A more pertinent question, however, may be “how does Read more ...