Rossini
Boyd Tonkin
When you go to the prince’s ball, would you prefer a night of sobriety or excess? Julia Burbach’s new production of Rossini’s Cinderella (La Cenerentola) for English National Opera frankly errs on the side of theatrical over-indulgence. The stage-business treats arrive thick and fast like trays of richly seasoned canapés, from the scurrying kids in mouse costumes who act as the mastermind Alidoro’s hi-tech little helpers to the all-male chorus togged out in an assortment of scarlet-to-pink period outfits as Prince Ramiro’s ancestral ghosts. I never quite discovered why those hard-working Read more ...
Robert Beale
The overture to Rossini’s La scala di seta is a frequent and familiar concert piece – not so the opera itself.It’s a light and frothy one-acter from 1812, just under two hours long including an interval, a farsa in Italian opera terms, and designed and presented with much and opening and closing of doors and comic business in Robert Chevara’s production (design by Jess Curtis).There are just six roles: I saw the “blue” cast of this double-cast show. It calls for talent beyond simple singing ability in every one of those roles, and it seems that with Chevara’s help the RNCM’s performers have Read more ...
Robert Beale
Sir Mark Elder’s zest for exploring fresh territory with the forces of the Hallé is unquenched even in his final season as music director. And who better to introduce the Stabat Mater of Rossini – a late flowering of the operatic wizard’s powers – than he, a champion of the rich and rare from operas past?It is, whatever else may be said, highly operatic in many aspects – and not unique in that respect in 19th century sacred music. Like other examples, it was premiered (in its final version) in a theatre, not a cathedral.For this performance there were both a starry quartet of soloists and the Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Welcome back, WNO! Yes, emphatically, and with a loud hurrah, which is precisely what the company received, and rightly received, from the somewhat arbitrarily scattered first night Millennium Centre audience for their opening revival of The Barber of Seville. But what possessed their new(ish) General Director, Aidan Lang, to celebrate the return, with all its lively hopes for the future, by digging up Giles Havergal’s 35-year-old production of Rossini’s masterpiece, is a mystery I am unable to unravel.Havergal’s stage-within-a-stage concept perhaps seemed chic and suitably postmodern in 1986 Read more ...
David Nice
Play it straight and you’ll get more laughs: that’s the standard advice on great operatic comedies like the masterpieces of the Gilbert & Sullivan canon, Britten’s Albert Herring, Verdi’s Falstaff, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. In comparison, for all its musical sparkle, Rossini’s Le Comte Ory may have amusing situations, but zero psychological insight into the characters, and plods along for the first half of Act One with very little intrinsic humour. So only the pious should have an issue with Cal “One Man, Two Guvnors” Crystal for camping and vamping it up; and what a gift he has in a Read more ...
Robert Beale
Harnessing the enthusiasm of youth has always been what Clonter Opera, on a farm in Cheshire, is about with its summer productions. The house is relatively small (there’s always a reduced orchestration as accompaniment), and the idea is that promising young voices can get a chance to try their luck with an audience and learn in the process.It's been notably successful in the past, as star after star has taken the first steps towards a durable career under the care of Clonter’s music staff and directors. This production was no exception: in fact the maturity of the lower male voices on display Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
The new Glyndebourne production of Rossini's Il turco in Italia has a truly winning smile on its face and a spring and a dance in its musical step. It is brimful of fun and good ideas, conveying the sense that a lot of joy has been had in its making. As one cast member tweeted during rehearsals a couple of weeks ago: "I have not stopped laughing and living my best life all day."That sense of joy definitely isn’t confined to the cast; the audience were clearly loving every moment of it at last night’s premiere, and with good reason. Once this production has had its 13 performances this season Read more ...
Richard Bratby
A crash, a scurry, a long, lilting serenade – the overture to Rossini’s Elizabeth I sounds oddly familiar. Not to worry. English Touring Opera has anticipated our confusion. “You may recognise this overture” flash the surtitles, to a ripple of laughter, before explaining that yes: this is essentially the same piece, originally composed in 1813 for Aureliano in Palmira that ended up attached to – of all things – The Barber of Seville. Rossini obviously rated it; in fact the overture’s closing section reappears as part of the chorus that closes Act One of Elizabeth I, which is more than it does Read more ...
graham.rickson
Couperin: Les Nations Réunies & autres sonades La Simphonie du Marais/Hugo Reyne (Musiques à la Chabotterie)François Couperin was one of the baroque era’s greatest keyboard composers. Did he write any orchestral music? Er, no. Though listen to a few minutes of Hugo Reyne’s version of his trio sonata “La Pucelle” and you'll be wondering where this music has been all your life. La Simphonie du Marais’s director and flautist, Reyne gives us a discursive but entertaining booklet essay in the form of an imaginary interview with Couperin. Near the end he tells the composer that “we made a Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
You could probably guess from the assembling audience that the orchestra making its Barbican debut last night came from Milan. That many mink coats rarely congregate in a London concert hall. And under the baton of its music director Riccardo Chailly, the Filarmonica della Scala – vastly more than the house band of Italy’s most famous opera house – delivered an evening of luxurious sophistication, dressing over-familiar repertoire in haute couture that made some oft-maligned masterpieces shine out like Cinderella on her way to the ball.La Scala’s seemingly unrufflable players, under Chailly’s Read more ...
william.ward
It has long been a mystery why no new production of Semiramide should have been staged at Covent Garden since 1887: un offesa terribile considering that this splendid melodramma tragico should have been the inaugural production of the Royal Italian Opera House (our current theatre’s predecessor) in 1847.In fact much of Rossini’s repertoire, both comic and tragic, fell out of favour worldwide from about the time of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, partly as a disappearance of such star lead sopranos such as Adelina Patti and Nellie Melba. So with the exception of a couple of propaganda-driven Read more ...
David Nice
They get to work with the best music and language coaches in the business. They make their mark in small parts throughout the Royal Opera season and showcase their art more prominently at the end of it, proving to the world that there are major talents among them (four outstanding ones, I reckon, on this showing). The big question mark is why, for this crucial event, the Jette Parker singers were saddled with one director, also on the Programme, and a movement co-ordinator who seem to have been little help with the interaction between characters, with feeling comfortable in their skins and Read more ...