Royal Opera
Classical music/Opera direct to home 15 - opening up at different ratesFriday, 12 June 2020
It's taken time, but at last we have two major musical figures speaking up for cultural institutions in dire straits. Following a crucial, detailed article by Charlotte Higgins in The Guardian, Simon Rattle and Mark Elder have finally taken up the... Read more... |
Classical Music/Opera direct to home 5 - orchestral manoeuvres in the lightMonday, 06 April 2020
Necessity has certainly been the mother of invention over the past three weeks, and orchestras especially, left in the dark with no means of coming together other than virtually, have had to adapt double-quick. The players, of course, are... Read more... |
Susanna, Royal Opera/London Handel Festival review - fitful shiningsThursday, 12 March 2020
That virtue can be fascinating and prayers to a just God dramatic have been proved in riveting productions of two late Handel oratorios, Theodora and Jephtha. Whether Susanna can ever be reclaimed for the stage as powerfully seems unlikely, but this... Read more... |
Fidelio, Royal Opera review - fitfully vivid singing in a dramatic voidMonday, 02 March 2020
Emblazoned on a drop-curtain in front of a mirror-image of the auditorium, the three great tenets of the French revolution seem to be mocking us right at the start, above all the second of them: equality, really, given the make-up of the Royal Opera... Read more... |
Alice's Adventures Under Ground, Royal Opera review - a blast for children of all agesWednesday, 05 February 2020
"About as much fun as you can have with your clothes on," promised a member of the two Royal Opera casts teamworking their way through multiple roles and costume changes for what in effect is Alice's Adventures Under Ground and Through the Looking... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Director Sir Jonathan MillerThursday, 28 November 2019
Doctor, writer, sculptor, curator, comedian, presenter and director, Sir Jonathan Miller (1934-2019) was one of the mighty cultural and intellectual omnivores of our age. To those of a musical or theatrical bent, however, Miller was above all one of... Read more... |
Death in Venice, Royal Opera review – expansive but intimate evocationsWednesday, 27 November 2019
Death in Venice is usually a dark and claustrophobic affair. It lends itself to small-scale staging with minimal props and suggestive, low-key lighting. But for this new production at the Royal Opera, director David McVicar has taken a different... Read more... |
Don Pasquale, Royal Opera review - fun and frolics in stylish new productionSaturday, 19 October 2019
Venetian director Damiano Michieletto’s new Royal Opera production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale is a clever and entertaining mix of old and new. The curtain rises to reveal a skeleton of a 1960s style house - there are doors, but no walls, revealing... Read more... |
The Intelligence Park, Linbury Theatre review - baroque to the point of obscurityThursday, 26 September 2019
Could Gerald Barry's first opera really be as enervating in the Royal Opera House's Linbury Theatre as it seemed nearly 30 years ago at its Almeida Music Festival premiere? Since then we've become accustomed to wonder at, even love, the Barry style... Read more... |
Agrippina, Royal Opera review - carry on up the CampidoglioTuesday, 24 September 2019
It was said of the Venetian audiences randy for the satirical antique of Handel's first great operatic cornucopia in 1709 that "a stranger who should have seen the manner in which they were affected, would have imagined they were all distracted".... Read more... |
Werther, Royal Opera review - shadows and sunsets from an unreconstructed romanticWednesday, 18 September 2019
Goethe’s Die Leiden des junges Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther) was a vital spark in the ignition of the German romantic movement. The story of a young man driven to kill himself for love of a woman, Charlotte, who loves him but marries... Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Royal Opera review - laid-back LotharioTuesday, 17 September 2019
Kasper Holten left a mixed bag of productions behind at Royal Opera when he left in 2017, but the best of them - though not all my colleagues on The Arts Desk have agreed - is this Don Giovanni, now back for its latest revival.Visually, the... Read more... |
