Mainly Opera and Ballet
Ethel Smyth’s third opera opened the Glyndebourne season, performed in its original French without cuts. Odd since it is by an English composer, and its first performance was in a cut down German translation that the composer refused to tolerate. She removed all the orchestral scores in Leipzig, and when Beecham gave the first British …
If you can get past the wanton incoherence of the first scene in David McVicar’s darkly seedy production, this was a performance — dedicated to the late, much-missed Dmitri Hvorostovsky — of huge power and pathos. A philanderer and serial sex offender enjoying unlimited power molests numerous young women, inspiring shame and anger among their …
Tickets for Bayreuth are hard to come by, so you know something’s wrong when people are disposing of Meistersinger at half price outside the theatre.
