Month: June 2022
An exquisite Die Tote Stadt, Longborough Festival Opera
Loughborough Festival has scored a glorious success with this exquisite and moving production from Carmen Jakobi of the until recently long-neglected Die Tote Stadt. With central performances of extraordinary power and beauty, this telling of Korngold’s 1920 opera relies on compelling acting and singing from Peter Auty as Paul, who is locked in a world…
A more Kardashian than Kalashnikov Tamerlano, Grange Festival
Handel’s Tamerlano gets a contemporary setting in The Grange Festival’s take on the 15th century story of the defeated Ottoman ruler Bajazet who chooses death over submission to the great Mongol conqueror.It takes rather a long time to get there and when it does is rather sudden, which is all the more surprising when the…
A weird and wonderful Macbeth, Grange Festival
Directed and choreographed by Maxine Braham, this production of Verdi’s Macbeth opened with one of the fantastical spirits poking her head through the curtains and giving the audience a “once-over”, which set the approach to this dark tale.The designs by Madeleine Boyd, lit by Matt Haskins, sets the Scottish Play in the world of books,…
Northern Ireland Opera La Traviata cast
Northern Ireland Opera has announced the main cast for the company’s new adaptation of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata, directed by Artistic Director Cameron Menzies, opening at Belfast’s Grand Opera House this September. Tenor Noah Stewart and Ukrainian baritone Yuriy Yurchuk return to the company, having starred in the site-specific production of La Bohéme, as Alfredo…
Kirklees Concert Season 2022-23 announced
Opera North and Kirklees Council have announced the Kirklees Concert Season 2022-23, leading into Kirklees Year of Music 2023 with an all-embracing programme featuring orchestral masterpieces, international guest conductors and soloists, the opening night of the latest of Opera North’s famed concert stagings, lunchtime organ recitals, seasonal favourites for Christmas and New Year, traditional Indian…
A psychological journey into Onegin at Opera Holland Park
It is often said that this opera could, perhaps should, be called Tatyana rather than Onegin as she is in many ways the more central (and interesting) of the characters. It is both a strength and weakness of Julia Burbach’s direction that the title character is not only on stage far more than the opera…
A sunny seaside Cosi fan tutte at Garsington Opera
I am not certain I understood the closing of John Cox’s 2004 staging of Cosi fan tutte, revived with a splendid cast at Garsington Opera this season, as the two “soldiers” leave their lovers and head off to war. Have they decided that women really are all the same and they are better off with…
An Arcadian idyll: Orfeo at Garsington Opera
One of the many delights of Garsington Opera is how the glass walls of the pavilion allow for the “action” to begin and continue beyond the actual stage and auditorium. Being set in the exquisite Wormsley Estate, itself an Arcadian idyll, this is wonderfully appropriate for the first act of John Caird’s charming production of…
Michael McCarthy’s 40 years of new opera at Music Theatre Wales
Michael McCarthy is Director of Music Theatre Wales and has staged over 30 productions for the company. Productions include Richard the Lionheart by Telemann and Handel in Germany, large-scale outdoor staging’s of Tosca and Nabucco in Norway, and productions of La Traviata, Cosi fan Tutte, Il Re Pastore, Fidelio and Don Giovanni. Also, Cinderella for…
Siegfried, Longborough Festival Opera
Longborough’s artistic director Polly Graham was understandably delighted to welcome back audiences, both to the Cotswolds opera festival and the resumption of a staged Ring Cycle, Siegfried. Not so enviable was the task of informing the Wagnerian devotees, hungry to embark on the next stage of the mammoth undertaking that Pauls Putnins would be singing…