Handel
mark.kidel
Coram Boy is a thrilling story of dead babies, teenage love, material greed and the redeeming power of music. This is Christmas entertainment that packs a powerful punch, borne aloft by the inspiring sound of Handel’s Messiah, with horrific events presented on stage, an emotional rollercoaster ride that is definitely not for the very young or the faint of heart.The production comes from the same team that launched the show, based on Jamila Gavin’s now classic young persons’ novel, at the National Theatre in 2005. Adapted by Helen Edmundson and directed by Melly Still, it has been re-imagined Read more ...
Jamila Gavin
Someone told me that the highways and byways of England were littered with the bones of little children. It was a shocking statement and of course I asked, “What do you mean?” I was told that abandoned children were a common feature of the past, but that in the 18th century someone called a “Coram Man” used to wander about from village to village and town to town – a bit like a tinker – picking up unwanted children.But who was this Coram Man?” No one seemed to know. With only the name “Coram” to go on, I trawled through the London telephone directory and came across the Coram Foundation in Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Where’s the African car? Seun Kuti wanted to know. There are German cars, Chinese cars (he grimaced) even Brazilian cars. At least, anyway, there is “original African music”, not traditional but something new. Actually, not entirely new, as some of the music and some of his band, Egypt 80, were that of his father, that visionary genius, subversive and sex maniac Fela. (Not just 28 wives “on a rota system” as Fela explained to me in an interview I wrote up for theartsdesk, but plenty of groupies, too.) One of the things I found impressive about Seun and his band last night was how he Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“Morning at the airfield: King Xerxes admires the new Spitfire, which he hopes will transform his continental campaign.” If the title – emphatically Xerxes rather than Serse – hadn’t already given the game away, the synopsis for English Touring Opera’s newest Handel production makes it quite clear that we’re not in Kansas (or Italy, or Persia for that matter) any more. The scene is the Battle of Britain and ruler Xerxes is doing his best impersonation of one of those dashing young men in his flying machine. The minute he slips off his goggles and delivers “Ombra mai fu” – reconceived as an Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
What was the audience on? They tittered when the bicycles came on, nearly cried when the whip was unleashed and virtually pissed themselves when the warring sides in Handel's crusader fantasy Rinaldo started fighting it out with hockey and lacrosse sticks (I know! Too-oo funny!). After last year's randy bunnies, Glyndebourne's Prom visits are fast becoming the nights to bury bad comedy.The one joke director Robert Carsen did get spot on was the libretto. I have some admiration for the drama's restlessness. But on the whole its unique mix of holy war, sorcery and Jackie Collins-like sauce Read more ...
Ismene Brown
For most dancers the first base is to get principal roles. For a star like Carlos Acosta, second base becomes urgent: to find the career path beyond classical ballet. Like Sylvie Guillem he seeks out a new contemporary dance path to fulfil, being still full of glorious physical vigour and still well under 40. But it turns out to be about wise investment. Guillem invested long ago in blue-chip stock, William Forsythe, Mats Ek, Akram Khan and Russell Maliphant, the choreographers with whom she now extends her stellar career into her mid-forties. Acosta hasn't invested so wisely.The London Read more ...
philip radcliffe
An opera a day keeps boredom at bay. There’s no danger of boredom in Buxton in mid-July. Set 1,000ft up in the Derbyshire hills, on the edge of the Peak District, and blessed with an Edwardian gem of an opera house, the old spa town is now well established with its own place on the festival map. And when the sun shines on it, as it did for most of the first day, it’s a picture.The Buxton Festival aims to keep you going from breakfast to bedtime (late) with nine operas, a programme of high-class music, a strong literary series bringing 30 well-known authors to flog their books, a touch of Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Each Handel opera (or the good ones at any rate) has its own musical colour and character. The woody husk of viola d’amore and low oboes bring pastoral calm to the frenzies of Orlando, bassoons lurk with doubt under the glossy strings of Ariodante. Rinaldo, the opera which announced Handel’s arrival on the London stage, glitters with the bright tints of brass and high woodwind, with even soft-toned recorders reworked as the metallic brilliancy of an obbligato piccolo.It’s triumphal stuff, musically as unsubtle as its psychology, but this is the very joy of it. The human complexities of Alcina Read more ...
David Nice
Georg Friedrich Händel of Halle probably never came here. Other great men certainly did: long after the official foundation of Göttingen's Georg August University in 1734 - the year in which the composer wrote a masterpiece, Ariodante, in another spa town, Tunbridge Wells - would-be or successful students included Goethe, Heine, the Brothers Grimm, Schopenhauer and Bismarck. It's hardly a Baroque town, either, though its beauties are manifold. What matters is that the revival of Handel operas began here in the 1920s and that for the last 20 years the annual festival has been bouncing under Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Handel spread dazzle and desolation evenly enough through the lead roles of Ariodante. A suitably stellar line-up for last night's concert performance at the Barbican was, therefore, awaiting us. Yet, as so often with Handel, the packed ship and its glistening booty inevitably tilted to one passenger and one casket of gems: to Joyce DiDonato and "Scherza infida". Little of note had happened up to this point. Act I saw the voices of most cast members (if not the orchestra Il Complesso Barocco) encased in fog. Only Sabina Puertolas (Dalinda) pierced the fuzzy vocal skies with some Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The Wigmore Hall was full to capacity last night, its crowd gathered to pay homage to a great musician at the end of his career, and to discover the talents of a great musician at the very beginning of his. While Alfred Deller might have been the pioneer, breaking ground and awakening audiences to new possibilities, it was in the hands of James Bowman that the countertenor voice was revealed as more than an oddity or novelty, a thing of uniquely expressive and vulnerable beauty. Sharing his farewell recital with young Iranian harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, Bowman offered us an evening which Read more ...
graham.rickson
There is a change to our coverage of classical CD releases. Since theartsdesk began in September 2009, we have been reviewing on a monthly basis. As of today we're switching to weekly and our round-up of the new classical albums will now appear every Saturday. To mark the change, we have a bumper helping, with Tansy Davies's new release taking a bow as our Disc of the Day. As for the rest, there's a Russian flavour – historic, idiomatic performances of Tchaikovsky symphonies, and exciting readings of Shostakovich piano concertos. Enjoy French sisters playing piano duets and a glorious Read more ...