Iphegénie en Tauride, Metropolitan Opera live cinema relay, February 2011
Posted on 27 February 2011This was Gluck’s penultimate opera, and the purity of its music endows the story with enormous clarity.
Monthly Archives: February 2011
Anna Nicole, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, February 2011
Posted on 18 February 2011This is an opera for today’s celebrity culture, where parts of the media, eager for salacious details, are happy to pick on anyone available. But Anna Nicole Smith was not just anyone — she worked as a stripper and snagged an 89 year-old billionaire, J. Howard Marshall I, though it’s said they never lived together. He …
Parsifal, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, February 2011
Posted on 17 February 2011Easter comes late this year but Parsifal is early, and stepping into the warmth of the London Coliseum from a washed-out winter’s day was a treat. As the first bars came out of the orchestra, Mark Wigglesworth’s conducting showed the clarity and quality Wagner’s music demands, and sent tingles down my spine.
Reading Hebron, Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, February 2011
Posted on 15 February 2011On February 25, 1994 the Jewish festival of Purim fell during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and an Israeli settler named Baruch Goldstein assassinated worshippers in the mosque over the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
Nixon in China, Metropolitan Opera live relay, cinema, February 2011
Posted on 13 February 2011Peter Sellars exuded enthusiasm from his toes to the end of his extraordinary hair-do, extolling Adams’s music and saying “it builds and has tension . . . rather like Mozart”.
Anna Nicole, Royal Opera House Insight Evening, February 2011
Posted on 9 February 2011This ‘Insight’ evening gave the audience some background to the forthcoming new opera by Mark-Anthony Turnage, and it was most informative and well presented. For a review of the first night, click here. “What’s it like to see your picture all over the London Underground?” asked Elaine Padmore, director of opera, referring to the ubiquitous …
Clybourne Park, Wyndham’s Theatre, London’s West End, February 2011
Posted on 6 February 2011It’s a clever play, using the housing market to expose the repressed anger of many black Americans and the self-satisfied ‘liberalism’ of many white professionals.
Die Zauberflöte, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, February 2011
Posted on 2 February 2011When the curtain opens a huge serpent appears on stage, which Christopher Maltman, as a very engaging Papageno, later claims to have killed. His body language confirms that the ladies of the night are right to gag him for his lies, and his attitudes provide an excellent contrast to the noble Tamino, beautifully sung by Joseph Kaiser.
Lucrezia Borgia, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, February 2011
Posted on 1 February 2011A mother’s anger leads unintentionally to the death of her adored illegitimate son. Shades of Verdi’s Rigoletto here, where a father’s anger leads to the death of his beloved daughter, but there are strong differences. Where Rigoletto is a physically ugly man with a hunchback, Lucrezia Borgia is a beautiful woman, now in her early forties. …