Tag Archives: Monteverdi Choir

The Damnation of Faust, BBC Prom 31, Royal Albert Hall, RAH, August 2017

Opera at the Proms is one of the glories of the summer season, allowing music and singers to communicate directly, with no director’s vision getting in the way. Two nights ago, Khovanshchina helped lay bare the soul of Russia, and now Berlioz’s magnificent musical evocation on the Faust myth, where the brilliant scholar veers into …

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Roméo et Juliette, Berlioz, BBC Proms, Prom 20, Royal Albert Hall, 30 July 2016.

This remarkable choral symphony is a broader and deeper work than the composer’s earlier and oft-played Symphonie fantastique. Based on David Garrick’s mid-eighteenth century version of Shakespeare’s play, which held the stage for some hundred years, its seven parts start with an overview of the heady emotions involved, and end with reconciliation between Montagues and …

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Orphée et Eurydice, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, ROH, September 2015

It seems the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice is flavour of the year. Monteverdi’s Orfeo appeared at the Roundhouse in January in an artless staging by the Royal Opera, before the BBC Proms gave it a beautifully elegant semi-staging under John Eliot Gardiner this summer. Now it’s the Royal Opera’s turn to succeed, this time …

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