Handel
David Nice
Sometimes the more modestly scaled Proms work best in the Albert Hall. Not that there was anything but vast ambition and electrifying communication from soprano Anna Prohaska and the 17-piece Il Giardino Armonico under Giovanni Antonini, making that 18 when he chose to take up various pipes (★★★★★). By contrast the big BBC commission from Joby Talbot to write a work for much-touted guitarist Miloš Karadaglić and orchestra in the evening's first Prom left very little impression. Praise be, then, to Glinka and Tchaikovsky for showing what glittering substance is all about, and to Alexander Read more ...
David Nice
It's swings and roundabouts for Glyndebourne this season. After the worst of one director currently in fashion, Stefan Herheim, in the unhappy mésalliance of the house's Pelléas et Mélisande, only musically gripping, comes the already-known best of another, Barrie Kosky. His Royal Opera Carmen and The Nose were half brilliant, half misfire; Handel's cornucopia of invention, never richer, in the very operatic oratorio Saul brings out a hallucinatory vision from Kosky that works from start to finish.The one reservation this time round would have to rest with the characterisation of the Read more ...
theartsdesk
Let's be honest, this is the least interesting Proms season on paper for years, at least in terms of adventurous repertoire choices, following on the heels of the best in 2017. Yet in statistical terms it's more comprehensive and multi-media-friendly than ever, starting tonight with a free "Curtain Raiser" performance before the official First Night tomorrow - see David Kettle's choice below – and ending some 75 main Proms and 11 smaller-scale beauties later on 8 September. All are broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and many televised.The conscious spotlighting of women composers, who have in fact Read more ...
graham.rickson
Handel: Sonatas for Violin and Basso Continuo The Brook Street Band (Avie)A slimmed-down Brook Street Band give us nine of Handel's violin sonatas on this disc. Autograph manuscripts only survive for five of them, but the other four sound sufficiently Handelian to have convinced many musicians, despite some scholarly niggles. These performances are winning, the playing fizzing with energy. Violinist Rachel Harris’s bright, clear sound is a consistent pleasure, and she's given fullsome, bubbly support by Tatty Theo and Carolyn Gibley on baroque cello and harpsichord respectively. Handel's Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Rejected by London’s Royal Academy of Music in 1726 on grounds of frivolity, Partenope is the ultimate Handelian rom-com – a comedy whose intriguing is carried out with a smile, a swagger and a sparkle in the eye. But what raised eyebrows in the 18th century – unusually short arias, plenty of pacy recitative and an exuberant buffo spirit that constantly leaps out from behind the elegant classical pillars of opera seria – raises hopes and glasses in the 21st. Light on its dramatic feet, with a deliciously assured heroine at its centre, the work is the perfect stuff of summer opera.And if there Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
If you go to ENO’s Acis and Galatea expecting a grassy knoll draped decoratively with a Watteau shepherdess or two then you may be disappointed. Launched in 2017, the company’s reliably punchy Studio Live strand (stripped-back, small-scale, off-site performances) continues here with Handel’s “little opera”, reinvented for the Instagram age. #Nymphsandshepherds #FlockthisBeanbags (candy-bright) are strewn across the turf (astro), bathed in the glow of the vending machines ranked across the back of the stage. “Work Hard, Play Harder” enjoins a balloon sign, while arrows point the way to “Groves Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
What a great show, on every level. David McVicar’s Glyndebourne production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare, originally staged in 2005, and in its third revival this year, has a cast without a weak link, and never fails to draw in the audience to the work’s cycles of power, suffering, death and intermittent triumph. It brings us deep into the mind and essence of every character. And holds us right there. Every time.The big change from the previous seasons is that the production has a new Cleopatra. The role was originally offered for 2005 to Rosemary Joshua but memorably taken in all three previous Read more ...
Michael Chance
Out of the blue comes a phone call. A freelance career is based on those to a certain extent. Certainly mine has been. But this one was a bit different. “Would you come and talk to us about the way forward?”. I soon learnt that what this actually meant was, “would you launch and run a new opera festival for us?”Singers as a bunch are inveterate gossips and effortless complainers. The hierarchy of targets usually starts with the incompetence of their agents, then quickly the unpleasantness of a recent conductor or director, before inevitably slagging off successful colleagues. Oh, don’t we Read more ...
Franco Fagioli
I started singing when I was nine years old in my primary school choir. I sang plenty of solos there before moving on to another children’s choir; that was a formative experience for me. At this point, I was singing the soprano part and from here I was invited to sing in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. This was my first experience of opera, and one that gave me great joy and satisfaction.My first major performance was as Hansel in Humperdinck's fairy-tale opera at the Teatro Colón of Buenos Aires. This was a special experience, on the one hand because it was one of my first leading roles and on the Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Held annually every Holy Week, Kraków’s Misteria Paschalia is one of the continent’s most vibrant early music festivals. With an increasing focus on international collaborations, the 2018 edition welcomed Edinburgh’s Dunedin Consort as artists in residence, and their director, Professor John Butt, as Resident Artistic Director. With early British sacred music at the fore, other European exponents of the genre included Phantasm, the Marian Consort, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and last year’s artists in residence, Le Poème Harmonique.Visiting over the Easter weekend, the first Read more ...
Ruby Hughes
Who was Giulia Frasi? This is so often the response I get when I mention the name of this Italian singer who came to London and became Handel’s last prima donna during the final decade of his life and, consequently, the supreme soprano of English music in the mid-18th century. Over the last five years or so, as I explored the music she inspired and performed, Frasi has become my own muse in a way. Music of the Baroque defines where my musical roots lie and has always been central to my repertoire. Some of my happiest memories are of performing music from this era.It was when I was researching Read more ...
graham.rickson
Lūcija Garūta: Music for Piano Reinis Zariņš (piano), Liepāja Symphony Orchestra/Atvars Lakstīgala (LMIC/SKANI)The Latvian composer Lūcija Garūta (1902-1977) reached maturity in the early days of Latvian independence, a supremely talented pianist, composer and polymath. Garūta was among the first Latvian women to drive a car, besides sailing a private yacht and pursuing an interest in science. She travelled to Paris and studied, briefly, with Alfred Cortot and Paul Dukas, identifying with Latvia’s musical “new romanticism”, a movement which sought to look forward rather than idealise Read more ...