Mainly Opera and Ballet
E. T. A. Hoffmann was an inspired writer of stories that melded fantasy and reality, and three in particular informed this opera by Offenbach. It is unquestionably the greatest work by this French master of operetta, and a new production at Covent Garden is hugely welcome — see my review in The Article.
A terrific opening of Covent Garden’s new Carmen. Olga Kulchynska made a seductive gypsy and Piotr Beczala a suitably weak but vocally strong and effortless Don José in this new production by Damiano Michieletto. The lighting beautifully conveyed the light and dark of Bizet’s opera — see my review in The Article.
In his last opera Berlioz extracts a single thread from Much Ado About Nothing by his beloved Shakespeare. Composed to a libretto he fashioned from the play the score’s wit and inventiveness delight the ear, but it is more a series of tableaux than a fully formed whole, and the question is how to stage …
