Mainly Opera and Ballet
Congratulations to Garsington for putting on this feisty production of Verdi’s second opera. The story is absurd, but the music is full of oomph and the staging was a delight. — see my review in The Article.
Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes portrays its eponymous character as neither hero nor villain. Like everyone else in George Crabbe’s story his life is controlled by the sea, their destinies forged and circumscribed by powerful forces, just as Britten’s was in the Second World War when he left Britain for America where this work was …
A magnificent new production of Tristan und Isolde, with set designs based on Wagner’s own, opened the season at Grange Park Opera this summer. Its previous staging was seven years ago in Hampshire, before they moved to their new home at West Horsley Place in Surrey. As a musical experience this was mesmerising under the …
This new staging of Rheingold is part of a new production of Wagner’s Ring being produced in collaboration with the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Director Richard Jones has given us a clear set of allusions in a modern setting, rather than a simplistic interpretation overlaid with subtleties that no audience member can fathom without reading …
Water is the source of life, yet for the Prince in Dvořák’s remarkable opera Rusalka it leads to death. The natural world he has encountered only when out hunting does not fulfil his needs, and this lost soul is drawn to the lake with its mysterious yet vibrant life. See my review in The Article.
Wonderful performances of this Verdi opera despite a heavily psychological production involving dancers, a chorus dressed as clowns, Rodolfo and Luisa as young children, and avoiding one death on the basis that evil will always survive. My review in The Article.
In this hugely welcome revival of David McVicar’s 2015 production, the three greatest moments came in Act III: Sondra Radvanovsky’s terrific Mamma morta, Dimitri Platanias’s cri de coeur against the wrong turn the Revolution has taken, and Elena Zilio’s electrifying cameo about giving her grandson to fight and die for France. Roberto Alagna’s Chenier was less …
This new production, some might say semi-staging, by John Fulljames gives space to the singers but the theatricality that Monteverdi brought to his stage works has gone missing. The dull costumes fail to express the essence of the characters, and make little distinction between gods and mortals, but Paule Constable’s lighting is magical. The action …
Thomas Adès’ previous opera The Tempest, set on Prospero’s mysterious island, finds a counterpoint here in the ostensibly mundane setting of an elegant dinner party — but all is not as it seems. Both operas feature very high soprano roles, Ariel in the Tempest and three of the ladies in Angel, again with the idea of …
This classic 1980 production by John Schlesinger, superbly revived by Daniel Dooner, provides the juxtaposition of magic and reality inherent in so many of E T A Hoffmann’s stories. The play by Barbier and Carré that underlies Offenbach’s opera is based on a selection of his tales that illuminate the dichotomy between life and art, …
The Don is dead. Long live the Don. Such is the message of this new ENO production by Richard Jones where the Don personifies a force of nature on which women can hang their fantasies. It all starts during the overture where we see Giovanni taking innumerable women through a door guarded by Leporello, and …
This is not an easy work to stage, emerging as it does from two slightly incompatible attitudes, by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, as to its eventual form. Its genesis lay in a series of songs — the Mahagonny Gesänge — published by Brecht in April 1927, which inspired Weill to fulfil a commission he …
Congratulations to WNO for staging a Rossini masterpiece that in its day “marked the final and complete emancipation of the bass singer … for the purposes of opera seria” (Francis Toye). Hitherto it had been conventional to restrict important bass roles to opera buffa, but here both Moses and Pharaoh are basses. The sacred theme …
In this new co-production with the Met in New York, English National Opera has a winner. During the overture a dozen circus performers (strongman, bearded lady, sword swallower, dwarves et al) emerge from a chest and are a continuous background presence, reminding me of the Commedia del Arte figures in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Each …
The opening night of this revival ended with a tribute to John Tomlinson for 35 years of wonderful service to the ROH — highly appropriate since composer Harrison Birtwistle has said Tomlinson was the key to writing this opera, which had been brewing in his mind for many years. The first scene shows Christine Rice as Ariadne on …
In Act III of this opera, Rigoletto takes his daughter Gilda to Sparafucile’s tavern to show her the Duke’s real nature. She hears him singing La donna è mobile, sees him having fun with Maddalena, and is shocked and heartbroken. Her father takes her home, sends her off to Verona, but … being too busy arranging the …
This was a second visit to the English National Opera’s new production of Hoffmann, a joint venture with the Bavarian State Opera. The cast was identical — see my previous review for more details — and once again, Georgia Jarman gave a remarkable performance as all three lovers: Olympia, Antonia, and Giulietta, along with the silent role of Stella …
E.T.A. Hoffmann was a jurist, composer, critic, cartoonist, and author of fantastic tales that form the basis for Nutcracker and Coppelia. His stories about a composer named Kreisler inspired Schumann to his Kreisleriana, and after his death this polymath became a character in a play by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, which Offenbach adopted, with a libretto by Barbier, for what is surely …
This is ostensibly a French opera sung in English, though it’s not really an opera but a légende dramatique by Hector Berlioz — a musical and vocal canvas on which a clever director can paint his own picture. And this is exactly what Terry Gilliam does by turning the whole thing into a history about the rise …
On 27th April 1720, a month before his sixtieth birthday, King George I attended the opera with his son the Prince of Wales. They’d only recently reunited after not speaking to another for three years, so this was just the right opera to see.
Olympia was sung and acted to perfection by Ekaterina Lekhina … and I shall always remember this as the highlight of the evening.
