Mainly Opera and Ballet
Sudden darkness in the auditorium … the orchestra struck up, and we were treated to great power and sensitivity from the baton of Edward Gardner. The silences were silent, the quiet passages quiet, and the loud passages with the chorus came over with huge force. This new production by Jonathan Kent starts in the overture with a …
The English National Opera have announced season 2012/13, which includes nine new productions. This puts them on track to continue the success that won the Olivier individual achievement Award in 2012. Among the new productions are two new commissions: The Sunken Garden by Dutch composer, film and stage director Michel van der Aa (an “occult mystery film opera”, exploring “hoax …
Transferring the action from late nineteenth century Paris to early 1930s Berlin allowed director Gale Edwards some extra scope with Act II. The Café Momus has become a cabaret venue, replete with scantily dressed girls in stockings and corsets, including one topless, and hints of bisexuality. With a superb performance by Taryn Fiebig as a very glamorous Musetta, this was …
It’s not often you see the main performer in an opera fall into deep water on stage. In fact I’m sure I’ve never seen such a thing before, and this was not metaphorical water. It was the real thing, and Andrew Shore gave a remarkable performance as the eponymous character. Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz was …
Had Eugene O’Neill’s written wishes been respected this autobiographical play would not be staged: “[It] is to be published twenty five years after my death — but never produced as a play”. As it was, unforeseen circumstances persuaded his widow to have the play published and performed, knowing the anguish he had gone through in …
For mockery and a self-deprecating sense of humour, Roger Allam’s Vanya is hard to beat. From his first clumsy entrance onto stage, to his bumbled expostulation, “I could have been a Dostoevsky”, and his failure to shoot the brother-in-law he’s learned to detest, this was a Vanya fated to manage the estate as an also-ran. The brother-in-law, Professor …
This was an entirely twenty-first century triple bill. The first work, Christopher Wheeldon’s Polyphonia, set to ten piano pieces by Ligeti, was first shown in New York at the start of the century, January 2001. The large Covent Garden stage gave space to the spare minimalism of Wheeldon’s choreography, with darkness sometimes surrounding a spot for the dancers. …
