Opera
Revival MOT
One of the greatest tests of how an opera house is functioning is the quality of its revivals. Both the…
Robo-Tell
Is there a fundamental, insuperable problem with staging Rossini’s Guillaume Tell on a budget, without the resources to conjure up…
Douchebags and dartboards
So how did London’s two big opera companies launch their new seasons last week? Not perhaps in the way you…
Femmes fatales
Three operas this week, each of them named after its (anti-)heroine: one of the heroines (the most sympathetic) murders her…
Bad night for Berlioz
I wonder whether grand opéra really takes war as seriously as this year’s Edinburgh Festival wanted it to. These vast…
Small is not beautiful
Neither OperaUpClose’s La traviata nor Finborough Theatre’s production of Boughton’s The Immortal Hour quite cut it
Tainted love
During my opera-going lifetime the most sensational change in the repertoire has, of course, been the immense expansion of the…
Work in progress
The Salzburg Festival’s reputation might largely be one of cultural conservatism, but it made an impressive commitment to new works…
Flower power
Rather than brave the boos and the first reprise of Frank Castorf’s half-hearted Ring at Bayreuth, I decided to pay…
Triumphant Tannhäuser
Seventeen years ago the Norwegian National Opera staged two cycles of the Ring in Norwich’s Theatre Royal, performances that have…
High hopes
One of the highlights of last year’s Glyndebourne Festival was the revival of Richard Jones’s Falstaff, spruced up and invigorated…
Mixed blessings
Dvorak’s The Jacobin and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, the two operas that opened this year’s Buxton Festival, are both relative…
Close encounters
London is lucky to have heard Joyce DiDonato at the height of her powers in two consecutive seasons. The American…
Virtuoso Wagner
It seems a very short time since I interviewed Richard Farnes about Opera North’s planned Ring cycle, the dramas to…
Sleazy does it
This season has already seen Manon Lescaut appear in several different operatic guises across the UK, but it was Covent…
Lacking the light touch
To suggest that the ageing Jules Massenet identified himself with the title character of his Don Quichotte is nothing new…
That’s entertainment
Operas about artists are not rare. However — perhaps for obvious reasons — those artists tend to be musicians, singers,…
Dark night of the soul
Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites is an audacious work, much more so than many others that advertise their audacity. It deals…
People and their prophets
On paper, Moses und Aron might seem intractable and abstract: a 12-tone score setting a libretto that meditates on God,…
Loss of heart
In all its minute details, Der Rosenkavalier is rooted in a painstakingly stylised version of Rococo Vienna that, paradoxically, is…
Northern light
Purists might have winced at Opera North’s advertisement for its latest revival of La Bohème. ‘If you see one musical…
Oedipus wrecks
I had high hopes for Julian Anderson’s first opera, Thebans. Premièred at the Coliseum last Saturday, it promised to mark…
Chorus of approval
Within the space of a few weeks we have had the rare chance of seeing the two great torsos of…
Just say noh
One of the proudest boasts to come from Britten HQ in Aldeburgh during the composer’s anniversary last year was that…
Gleeful romp
There’s a great deal to disapprove of in Gounod’s Faust. It breaks down a pillar of western literature and whisks…
