Mainly Opera and Ballet
This year’s Buxton Festival opened with a look back at the past, in a musical set to works from the 1930s by Ivor Novello which featured the activist and pacifist Vera Brittain, who lived in Buxton during her teenage years. A moving tribute, and very different from Bellini’s La Sonnambula on the second night, and …
After Bellini’s unexpected failure with his 1829 opera Zaira, based on Voltaire’s tragedy from a century earlier, the following year saw a new opportunity with an opera for the 1830 Carnival season in Venice. Unfortunately he had but a month and a half to prepare it, so his librettist Felice Romani rewrote an earlier text …
Of all operas in the first half of the nineteenth century, Bellini’s Norma was one of the greatest, widely admired by composers and having a profound effect on Wagner. Yet the ENO has never before put it on stage, for one simple reason. It requires an extraordinary soprano who can combine enormous power with vocal …
Why is this glorious bel canto opera not performed more often? The reason is surely that one needs a terrific Norma, and Opera Holland Park produced one. Yvonne Howard was superb, and with Heather Shipp as Adalgisa these are performances not to be missed. Their duet towards the end of Act I when Adalgisa comes …
Spanish tenor Celso Albelo was terrific as Elvino, being on top form from beginning to end, and giving serious meaning to the term bel canto.
With Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez as the lovers Amina and Elvino, this promised to be a superb performance and it was.
