Mainly Opera and Ballet
An evening of Italian verismo at Opera Holland Park provided a very effective production of two little known works. The first half featured Margot la Rouge an opera by Delius, not normally thought of as composing for this genre, and the second half of the evening included Puccini’s first stage work Le Villi. See my review in …
Gilbert and Sullivan work their magic, encouraging us to laugh at pomposity and mock the system that allows inadequate fools to ascend the heights of power and respect. This production by Cal McCrystal was a lively affair, despite underwhelming singing. My review in The Article.
Wolf-Ferrari’s delightful comedy, Il Segreto di Susanna under the baton of John Andrews formed a delightful prelude to Tchaikovsky’s final opera Iolanta, conducted by Sian Edwards. This was a revelation in Olivia Fuchs’ excellent production and Sian Edwards’ sensitive conducting that really drew forth the emotional pull of the music that Tchaikovsky created to embody the …
Opera Holland Park aims to make opera more accessible, and by launching their 2017 season with Puccini’s light and fizzing Rondine they help do just that. Its lively melodies and Parisian sentimentality may lack the tragic depth of La Traviata or the drama of La Bohème, but if it’s dramatic punch you need, Katya Kabanova …
The text for this 1640 opera was written specially to attract the 73-year old Monteverdi to Venice, where opera had gone public for the first time just three years earlier. It is a remarkable work based on the second half of Homer’s Odyssey, starting with the Phaecians taking the hero back to Ithaca after 20 …
This 1651 opera by Venetian composer Francesco Cavalli (1602–76), based on a story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, concerns a nymph called Calisto (‘most beautiful’ in Greek), lusted after by Jupiter who disguises himself as her mistress Diana in order to woo her. Diana herself is secretly drawn to one of her admirers, the youth Endymion, setting …
This 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 …
