Così fan tutte, English Touring Opera, ETO, Hackney Empire, March 2020
Posted on 9 March 2020A delightful production in bright colours with a very fine young cast, all under the baton Holly Mathieson. My review in The Article.
Tag Archives: Hackney Empire
Der Silbersee: Ein Wintermärchen, English Touring Opera, ETO, October 2019
Posted on 7 October 2019Premiered in February 1933, Kurt Weill’s Silbersee gives an insight into the Germany in which Hitler had just come to power. It is a story of guilt, remorse, anger, resentment, and ultimately redemption, superbly brought to life in James Conway’s theatrically sensitive production — see my review in The Article.
Patience, English Touring Opera, ETO, Hackney Empire, March 2017
Posted on 9 March 2017What fun! Just the ticket for an evening out, and Liam Steel’s witty production makes this a fine riposte to the absurdities and pretentions of modern life. Of course, Gilbert’s libretto is poking fun at the sophistry and ‘art for art’s sake’ attitude that infected the Victorian aesthetic movement, personified here by Reginald Bunthorne. He …
Don Giovanni, English Touring Opera, ETO, Hackney Empire, March 2016
Posted on 12 March 2016This intriguing new production sets the action in the underground world of Vienna during the early 1900s, and a junction of two tunnels at the rear of the stage later becomes the memorial to the Commendatore. His dramatic appearance in ghostly silhouette towards the end well suits this subterranean world. Though slightly different from the …
Pia de’ Tolomei, English Touring Opera, ETO, Hackney Empire, March 2016
Posted on 11 March 2016While working on the Siege of Calais, performed by the ETO this time last year, Donizetti and his librettist wanted to duplicate their great success with Lucia di Lammermoor. Casting around for another gentle and loving heroine, whose death would evoke huge pathos, they settled on Pia de’ Tolomei from Dante’s Purgatorio, and in James …
Iphigénie en Tauride, English Touring Opera, ETO, Hackney Empire, March 2016
Posted on 6 March 2016In Greek tradition, Iphigenia was sacrificed so the gods would supply her father King Agamemnon with a wind to sail his becalmed fleet against Troy. Euripides tackled the subject in Iphigenia at Aulis, followed later by Iphigenia in Tauris, the basis for this Gluck opera in which Artemis — here called Diana — has already …
La Bohème, English Touring Opera, ETO, Hackney Empire, March 2015
Posted on 14 March 2015This new ETO production boasts a terrific Rodolfo in David Butt Philip, who sang the same role to critical acclaim for the English National Opera last autumn. This time his more relaxed attitude allowed a fine interaction with the excellent Mimi of Russian soprano Ilona Domnich, and in their Act I meeting the eloquent message …
The Wild Man of the West Indies, English Touring Opera, ETO, Hackney Empire, March 2015
Posted on 13 March 2015This opera, mixing tragic and comic elements, has a Shakespearean tinge in the relationship of its main character Cardenio to a local slave named Kaidamà, like King Lear and his fool, though the ending is pure Donizetti. The back-story is that the unfaithfulness of Cardenio’s wife Eleonora — with his brother Fernando to boot — …
The Siege of Calais, English Touring Opera, ETO, Hackney Empire, March 2015
Posted on 8 March 2015Donizetti had once hoped to make his entry to Paris with this opera, but it was not to be. The weakness was Act III, wisely cut by James Conway in this production, leaving us with the departure of six burghers from Calais being sent to their deaths on the command of England’s king Edward III, …
Life on the Moon, English Touring Opera, ETO, October 2014
Posted on 18 October 2014This is all huge fun and the packed audience at London’s Hackney Empire clearly loved the staging of this Haydn opera by comedy specialist Cal McCrystal. The plot is simple; a wealthy but miserly widower named Buonafede (good faith), superbly sung by Andrew Slater, is tricked into giving dowries to his daughter and his maid …
Magic Flute, English Touring Opera, ETO, March 2014
Posted on 8 March 2014Producing Mozart’s Magic Flute can be tricky for a touring company, but ETO rises magnificently to the challenge. The contrast between the serious, sombre realm of Sarastro, the lightheartedness of Papageno, the threatening nature of the Queen of the Night’s world, and the magic that brings two couples together is well expressed in a single …
Così fan tutte, English Touring Opera, Hackney Empire, March 2013
Posted on 8 March 2013If this were Shakespeare we might find our performers to be spirits melted into thin, thin air, for we know nothing about them. They are ciphers on which Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte created a piece of theatre at once frivolous and profound, expressing a joy, playfulness and inanity inherent to life itself. The …
The Barber of Seville, English Touring Opera, ETO, Hackney Empire, March 2012
Posted on 9 March 2012Clever designs and glorious costumes by Rhys Jarman give a fine dramatic underpinning for this production of Rossini’s Barber, and Grant Doyle made a marvellous entrance as the barber, Figaro. This was the first night, and after a nervous start things came together in Act II. Kitty Whately made a beautifully inspiring Rosina, mistress of the situation despite the machinations …
La Clemenza di Tito, English Touring Opera, ETO, Hackney Empire, London, March 2011
Posted on 13 March 2011Redemption for all guilty parties has to wait for the second and final act, which shows in stark detail the magnanimity of Titus.
Il Tabarro, and Gianni Schicchi, English Touring Opera, ETO, Hackney Empire, March 2011
Posted on 5 March 2011Of the operas dealing with unfaithfulness in marriage, where a man kills his wife’s lover, the two that really get to me are Mascagni’s Cavalieri Rusticana, and Puccini’s Il Tabarro. The Puccini is a superbly dark and intense drama and, like his other operas, combines musical depth with gripping theatre. Moored on the Seine is a barge …