Peter Grimes, in concert at the Royal Festival Hall
Posted on 2 December 2019Wow, this semi-staged concert performance under the direction of Edward Gardner with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra was sensational — see my review in The Article.
Tag Archives: Clive Bayley
Don Carlo, Grange Park Opera, June 2019
Posted on 10 June 2019A thrilling revival of the 2016 production, once again under the excellent baton of Gianluca Marcianò. Clive Bayley and Ruxandra Donose reprised their beautifully nuanced performances as Philip II and Princess Eboli, joined this time by international rising star Leonardo Capalbo as Carlo, and Brett Polegato as Rodrigo, both superb, with Marina Costa-Jackson singing strongly …
Billy Budd, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, April 2019
Posted on 25 April 2019A hugely moving performance of Deborah Warner’s new production under the baton of Ivor Bolton, with Toby Spence superb as Captain Vere, with Brindley Sherratt a vivid Claggart, and Jacques Imbrailo conveying the fatal charm and blinding honesty of Billy himself. See my review in The Article.
Katya Kabanova, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, February 2019
Posted on 6 February 2019Janaček’s emotionally intense opera has been given an illuminating new production by Richard Jones, with American soprano Amanda Majeski using her vocal power and wonderful purity of tone to give a beautifully sensitive and sympathetic performance in the title role. Superb conducting by Edward Gardner — see my five-star review in The Article.
Lucia di Lammermoor, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, October 2018
Posted on 26 October 2018This 2008 production by David Alden expresses the idea that the Ashton family’s dour Calvinist attitudes have arrested the emotional development of their leader Enrico. He plays with his toys at one point, and even embraces his sister Lucia in a lecherous manner. There is much to be said for this psychological approach, but the …
Roméo et Juliette, Grange Park Opera, GPO, July 2018
Posted on 2 July 2018Of the half-dozen or so operas on this Shakespeare play, Gounod’s is undoubtedly the best, and Patrick Mason’s staging in pre-war fascist Italy gives an interesting modern take on the background to the feuding families. Knives and baseball bats come out amidst threats and fights, leaving Juliette a prey to her own burgeoning emotions, her …
La Clemenza di Tito, BBC Prom 59, Royal Albert Hall, RAH, August 2017
Posted on 29 August 2017Hearing the overture without the stage trickery of the Glyndebourne production allowed us to fully appreciate the glorious dramatic intensity and lightness of spirit given to Mozart’s music by Robin Ticciati and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. The absence of efforts at contemporary relevance by a director — one of the joys of …
Don Giovanni, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, October 2016
Posted on 1 October 2016The 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 …
Don Carlo, Grange Park, GPO, June 2016
Posted on 23 June 2016For a large opera house Verdi’s Don Carlo is quite a challenge, even in the four (rather than five) act version seen here. The great auto-da-fé scene at the end of Act II, where Carlo leads in a deputation from Flanders, threatens his father Philip II and is disarmed by Rodrigo, before the burning of …
William Tell, Welsh National Opera, WNO, Cardiff, September 2014
Posted on 13 September 2014For the first Milan production of this opera, after its earlier première in Paris, there was predictable trouble with the Austrian authorities. The scene with the apple was cut, the oppressors became the English, and Tell was William Wallace. How appropriate then that the WNO have given the first performance of David Pountney’s new production …
Don Quichotte, Grange Park Opera, June 2014
Posted on 23 June 2014In the much-performed Don Quixote ballet (music by Minkus) the Don sees his fantasy Dulcinée as one of a pair of young lovers whom he gracefully helps bring together, and they are the main characters. But in this late Massenet opera the main character is the noble yet delusional Don himself, with Dulcinée as a …
Peter Grimes, Grange Park Opera, June 2014
Posted on 16 June 2014Having heard negative comments from one friend about Jeremy Sams’s new production of Grimes, and from another that it was first rate, I was intrigued to see for myself. Sets and costumes were reliably authentic from a time somewhere in the late nineteenth/ early twentieth century, and the superb video illusion of the sea rippling to …
Gloriana, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, June 2013
Posted on 21 June 2013Unlike predecessors such as Peter Grimes (1945) and Billy Budd (1951), Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana may never be part of the standard repertoire, but the ROH has now given us a fine new perspective on this opera. Exactly sixty years after its first performances to celebrate the Queen’s Coronation, this newly imaginative, clever and colourful production …
Eugene Onegin, Grange Park Opera, June 2013
Posted on 10 June 2013At the end, after Onegin has clung uselessly to Tatyana and she has pulled herself away and left the stage, we see Prince Gremin walk across the upper level holding a pistol. A fine dramatic effect, following many others in this beautifully honed production. The splitting of the set into an upper and lower level, …
The Flying Dutchman, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, April 2012
Posted on 29 April 2012Sudden 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 …
Tales of Hoffmann — a second view, ENO, London Coliseum, February 2012
Posted on 19 February 2012This 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 …
The Tales of Hoffmann, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, February 2012
Posted on 11 February 2012E.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 …
Katya Kabanova, English National Opera, ENO at the London Coliseum, March 2010
Posted on 16 March 2010… this dark and theatrically powerful opera is a must-see, and you would have to go a long way to find better singing or conducting — they were both virtually unbeatable.
Lucia di Lammermoor, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, February 2010
Posted on 5 February 2010Altogether, David Alden has created a particularly malicious take on the story, and it works.
Bluebeard’s Castle, and Rite of Spring, ENO, London Coliseum, November 2009
Posted on 7 November 2009Clive Bayley sang an autistic and threatening Bluebeard, with Michaela Martens as a powerful Judith.