Tag Archives: Barbican

Between Worlds, English National Opera, ENO, Barbican, April 2015

This opera, ostensibly about the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, is really about what happens when people are suddenly caught between life and death, with only a tenuous connection to their loved ones in the world outside. This is reflected in Michael Levine’s set design for Deborah Warner’s production. The …

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Lest We Forget, English National Ballet, ENB, Barbican, April 2014

One hundred years after the start of The Great War, this commemoration of its horrors opened at the Barbican last night with three new ballets specially commissioned by artistic director Tamara Rojo. The evening started with Liam Scarlett’s No Man’s Land connecting women at home with their men at war via the factory work of …

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The Sunken Garden, English National Opera, Barbican, April 2013

This new musical work by Michel van der Aa, combines film narrative and a 3D visual world behind a screen, to a libretto by novelist David Mitchell. Novels are very different from opera librettos, which must develop the characters and story in relatively few words, and part of the problem with this one is that …

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Einstein on the Beach, Barbican Theatre, May 2012

When this work was created in 1976 the musical world was full of new inventiveness, and this opera — if that’s the right term — was very much in the avant garde. Five hours of theatre without an interval, allowing one to enter and exit at will, was a new experience and new experiences were in vogue. …

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Ruddigore, Opera North, Barbican, November 2011

W. S. Gilbert, the librettist for this work, was a master of wit, not just on paper but spontaneously in conversation. When a neighbour referred admiringly to Ruddigore calling it Bloodygore, Gilbert objected, so the neighbour said: “Same thing isn’t it?” WSG was swift as a rapier, “If I admire your ruddy countenance, it doesn’t mean I …

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Queen of Spades, Opera North, Barbican, November 2011

Three, Seven, Ace — that’s the secret the old Countess tells Herman in her brief return from beyond the grave. She did it beautifully, Josephine Barstow singing this role in an utterly compelling way. A perfect Countess, well backed up by Jonathan Summers as Tomsky, who gave a gripping Act I account of the Countess’s young life in …

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A Magic Flute, C.I.C.T./Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, at the Barbican, March 2011

Essentially this is a pared down version of Mozart, played on the piano, with singers who would not hold their own with an orchestra, and sometimes had difficulty filling the Barbican concert hall.

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Elektra, in concert with Valery Gergiev and the LSO, Barbican, January 2010

The name Elektra means ‘shining’ — as in the alloy electrum — and Gergiev with the LSO gave us a shining performance.

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