Mainly Opera and Ballet
This new staging of Rheingold is part of a new production of Wagner’s Ring being produced in collaboration with the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Director Richard Jones has given us a clear set of allusions in a modern setting, rather than a simplistic interpretation overlaid with subtleties that no audience member can fathom without reading …
The first glimpse of what will be Richard Jones’ new production of Wagner’s Ring, for the English National Opera and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, shows some intriguing imagery. Rheingold will appear in the 2022/23 season, with Siegfried and Götterämmerung in 2024 and 2025. See my review of Valkyrie in The Article.
In these days of recovery from Covid-19, with social distancing still in force, the Royal Opera decided to reopen full scale live operas on stage with Mozart’s late opera La Clemenza di Tito, which has only an off-stage chorus. This new production by Richard Jones did not entirely work. See my review in The Article.
This production uses Musorgsky’s vibrant, original version, with several singers returning to the roles they performed when this production was new in 2016. Again Bryn Terfel was magnificent as a powerfully sympathetic and well-nuanced Boris, with David Butt Philip giving a mean performance as the novice Grigory (Dmitri the pretender). New to the role of …
When it all seemed to be over a dance encore was performed, to music extracted from earlier in Berlioz’s score. But this did not redeem Richard Jones’s dreary production, which made a lacklustre start to the new Glyndebourne Season. See my review in The Article
Janaček’s emotionally intense opera has been given an illuminating new production by Richard Jones, with American soprano Amanda Majeski using her vocal power and wonderful purity of tone to give a beautifully sensitive and sympathetic performance in the title role. Superb conducting by Edward Gardner — see my five-star review in The Article.
When Strauss and von Hofmannsthal first imagined this opera its working title was Ochs von Lerchenau, and in this performance Brindley Sherratt gave a superb account of that role. Not the buffoon of some portrayals, he exhibited a style of his own, with stockings that didn’t reach his breeches in Act I — a country …
Lady Macbethis an opera that needs to be seen in the theatre, and its powerful dramatic impact is beautifully illuminated by this 2004 production by Richard Jones — the first at the Royal Opera House. Based on an 1865 novella by Nikolai Leskov the opera, but omitting the third murder, committed for purely mercenary reasons, …
The libretto for Handel’s Rodelinda, regina de’ Longobardi (queen of the longbeards, or Lombards) was written by the remarkable Nicola Francesca Haym, musician, theatre manager, performer, and even numismatist who wrote the first work on the ancient coins in the British Museum. Its huge clarity, particularly in Amanda Holden’s excellent translation, brings to life a …
Forget the fine new production for a moment – this was a fantastic performance. The musical dynamics of Antonio Pappano’s conducting allowed Puccini’s score to express itself in every note. His consummate musical direction supported a gripping performance by Michael Fabiano as Rodolfo, with a sweetly sung yet hugely powerful Mimi by Nicole Car, both …
The Don is dead. Long live the Don. Such is the message of this new ENO production by Richard Jones where the Don personifies a force of nature on which women can hang their fantasies. It all starts during the overture where we see Giovanni taking innumerable women through a door guarded by Leporello, and …
The background to this opera is the reign of Ivan the Terrible, who curbed the power of the boyars and surrounded himself with reliable, talented men such as Boris Godunov, who became regent to the weak-minded Fyodor on Ivan’s death. During the regency, a later son named Dmitri died in slightly mysterious circumstances, and after …
Although one of the greatest operas ever written, it is not unknown for directors and conductors to make a mess of it, even at Wagner’s own temple in Bayreuth, but not at the ENO, thank God! This resounding success throws down the gauntlet to those Beckmessers in the Arts Council who not only mark down …
The ENO deserve to score a big hit with this new Richard Jones production of Fanciulla. Three acts, each with its own gloriously simple set by Miriam Buether, along with costumes by Nicky Gillibrand, evoked the quintessential clarity of the American far west. Jones drew superb acting from the large cast, and Canadian conductor Keri-Lynn …
Glyndebourne’s 80th anniversary festival, dedicated to the late Sir George Christie, son of the founder and the man who built the present opera house, opened just ten days after his death. His son Gus came onstage at the start to offer a tribute to his ‘dear old Dad’, and in honour of the 150th anniversary …
First performed in 1725 this Handel opera, set in seventh century Milan, boasted the famous castrato Senesino as Berterido, husband of Rodelinda. He has lost his throne, is now presumed dead, and his position has been usurped by Grimoaldo, who has fallen in love with Rodelinda, despite being betrothed to Berterido’s sister Eduige. Tastes have …
Dreams or Reality? For Michel, a bookseller from Paris, there is something addictive about dreams, but in the first two acts the auditorium lights slowly come on at the end, as if he is waking up. When the third act nears its conclusion the lighting shows some promise of doing the same again, but it …
E.T.A. Hoffmann was a jurist, composer, critic, cartoonist, and author of fantastic tales that form the basis for Nutcracker and Coppelia. His stories about a composer named Kreisler inspired Schumann to his Kreisleriana, and after his death this polymath became a character in a play by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, which Offenbach adopted, with a libretto by Barbier, for what is surely …
Suor Angelica knocked Tabarro right off the stage because of one person — Ermonela Jaho. She was . . . words fail me . . . sublime . . . ethereal.
This is an opera for today’s celebrity culture, where parts of the media, eager for salacious details, are happy to pick on anyone available. But Anna Nicole Smith was not just anyone — she worked as a stripper and snagged an 89 year-old billionaire, J. Howard Marshall I, though it’s said they never lived together. He …
In the last two productions I’ve seen … the stage has been darkly lit, in keeping with the coldness and scheming inherent in the story, but this production by … is quite different.
