Mainly Opera and Ballet
In earlier operas such as Peter Grimes and Turn of the Screw, Britten had already shown a striking musical ability to interleave scenes of innocent joy with others of dark and mysterious intensity, so he was ideally suited to turning Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream into an opera. It was first performed at Aldeburgh in 1960 …
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 …
For a touring production with limited scope for elaborate stage designs this is little short of miraculous. Tim Mitchell’s lighting works wonders with the rooftops of Paris, the romance and passion of Act I turning to a scene of paradise after death in Act IV as Mimi lies alone in the Bohemians’ apartment. I loved …
First produced in Venice when Rossini was just 20, this comic farce is a little gem. Its quality is sometimes called into question by a story that the impresario who commissioned it served the young composer with a poor libretto by Giuseppe Maria Foppa to which Rossini responded with slapdash music. Whatever the truth of …
