Mainly Opera and Ballet
The year 1905 saw the first production of Richard Strauss’s Salome, an opera that remains as dramatically shocking now as it did then, and Franz Lehar’s Merry Widow, an operetta that remains one of the very finest ever written. Congratulations to the Met for getting five-time Tony Award Winner Susan Stroman to put on this …
This concert version of the Glyndebourne production, using the same singers, conductor, chorus and orchestra, added one glorious extra touch. At the end of the Epilogue, after Captain Vere has recalled his inaction that led to the hanging of Billy Budd in 1797, he walked slowly off the stage, and the only sound in the …
A brilliant evening at the opera requires three things: a first rate opera, an illuminating production, and marvellous singing. Here we had all three. Billy Budd, shown here in its two-act version, rather than the four-act original, is a stunning piece of theatre. The three main characters, Captain Vere, Billy, and Claggart, all embody in …
Though only a concert performance with orchestra on stage, the ample room in front allowed the singers to dramatise their feelings, none more so than Danish baritone Bo Skovhus as the Count. He injected huge life, lustiness and levity into the performance of this engaging philistine, a wonderful counterpoint to the artistic sensitivities of his …
This production brings out the horrid awkwardness of Grimes’s estrangement from the local community, eliciting our sympathy for him …
