Mainly Opera and Ballet
With the Prince of Wales in attendance at David Pountney’s new production of Ballo, would it be the original late eighteenth century setting with the assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden, or America with no regicide and Riccardo as Governor of Boston? In the event it was neither, more nineteenth century Gothick with a …
This year’s Tosca at Nevill Holt produced by Oliver Mears, an intelligent director who clearly cares about the music, augurs well for his new appointment as artistic director of the Royal Opera. The setting, the troubled Italy of the 1970s when anti-establishment forces such as the Red Brigades were causing havoc, developed from an original …
Donizetti’s La Favorite, once far more widely performed than it is today, is a triumph for UCOpera, who have brought this unfairly neglected work to stage in its original French version. The story is straightforward enough: a young novice monk, Fernand is rejected from the monastery after falling in love with a lady named Léonor, …
