Mainly Opera and Ballet
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.
Sadly this delightful Viennese operetta was converted into a story set in New York dealing with the criminal underworld. This necessitated wholesale changes to the libretto, and the performers were required to speak in New York accents, which really didn’t work — see my review in The Article.
Political intrigue, paternity and poison are the principal ingredients driving this Verdi opera. The story, set in 14th century Genoa, may be ahistorical in detail but the ambitions driving it are not, and there really was a pirate turned governor named Simon Boccanegra — see my review in The Article.
A fine but simple staging of Wagner’s Flying Dutchman was given a superb performance at Opera Holland Park. The two choruses sang extremely well, and those from the Dutchman’s ghostly ship appeared in threatening guise like figures from some modern terrorist group. Altogether a wonderful experience — see my review in the Article.
An excellent production of Tchaikovsky’s opera, set in the time of Catherine the Great, was beautifully staged. Such a pleasant relief to see it set in the correct period, and without altering the story. My review in The Article.
