Mainly Opera and Ballet
This wonderful opera by Janáček, based on a play by the great Czech writer Karel Čapek, involves a complex legal case that has been running for over a hundred years. Into this confusion steps Elena Makropulos, who exhibits unusual knowledge of the case. Born in the late sixteenth century she wants to find the secret …
A man on death row in a Louisiana State penitentiary strikes up a written correspondence with a nun, and asks her to come and see him. She does, but not to plead his innocence, rather to plead with him to admit his crimes and seek solace in his dying hours. This superb opera offers anger, …
Once again the English National Opera defy the Arts Council which has stripped them of funding. This semi-staged version of Britten’s Albert Herring was a musical triumph under the baton of Daniel Cohen, and after another performance in London it moves to Salford, which is partly what the Arts Council wants. Great musicality — see …
This engaging and eclectic new production by Julia Burbach gave us Rossini’s Cenerentola in a form where the pompous father seemed relatively normal. He hides huge insecurity behind a pretentious exterior, but Burbach managed to avoid making him a complete buffoon — see my review in The Article.
What a wonderful performance to open the 2025/26 season at the Royal Opera. This new production of Tosca by the Royal Opera’s artistic director Oliver Mears is updated to modern times, and superbly conducted by music director Jakub Hruša. It elicited huge applause from the audience — see my review in The Article.
Like the mighty Volga, the music of Janáček sweeps all before it in this short opera based on a Russian play. The production contains incomprehensible allusions such as a red angel, but it matters little. The musical performance was outstanding — see my review in The Article.
This was my first encounter with the Hamlet of French composer Ambroise Thomas, and very moving it was. The Festival also performed a brief seventeenth opera, Charpentier’s La descente d’Orphée aux enfers, plus four short operas, two of which were interesting — see my review in The Article.
Hugely entertaining shenanigans on stage, all sung and spoken in a wonderful English version with jokes comprehensible to a modern audience — see my review in The Article. This performance rounded out opera productions at the Grange Festival for summer 2025, though they still have other stage performances in store.
Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro may be a perfect opera, but in the wrong hands it can seem to drag towards the end. Here that was very much not the case, and this new production at Glyndebourne succeeded very well indeed, encouraged by a very receptive audience — see my review in The Article.
Mazeppa himself is sometimes regarded as a Ukrainian patriot against the Russians, but the truth is somewhat more complicated. Sweden was at that time, along with Russia, a great power in the region, but for more details see my review of this furiously compelling opera.
