Year: 2024
Not much magic on this Island Of Dreams, Grange Park Opera
** Anthony Bolton quite rightly beamed with pride as he was generously received at his curtain call as composer of this new work receiving its premier (and one of two performances) at Grange Park Opera. The response for the production team including director David Pountney was rather more muted. The singers and Gascoigne Orchestra conductor…
MidSummer Night’s Dream psychobabble at Garsington Opera
*** Psychobabble rather than magic takes over in Netia Jones’s new staging of the ever-popular Britten and Pears’s version of the Shakespeare play, and the result is a missed opportunity. Why so? Because the work is being staged at the fabulous Garsington Opera pavilion which is all glass and other directors have made great use…
Terfel triumphs, of course, in Grange Park Opera double bill
Aleko / Gianni Schicchi Grange Park Opera ***** Just when you think you have seen all there can be from Bryn Terfel along comes a new performance (or in this case two) that reminds just why the North Walian really deserves his star status. As if to showcase his abilities we have him cast in…
Kátya Kabanová, Janácek: a soprano of exceptional ability
***** Grange Park Opera From the powerhouse of a season, it would again seem Grange Park Opera is the place to hear our very finest British singers, and Swansea-born Natalya Romaniw as Kátya Kabanová is the perfect example. Add to that Sir Bryn Terfel in the double bill of Aleko and Gianni Schicchi and it…
Il trittico, reflections on the human condition, Welsh National Opera
**** Whether it was the arrival of Taylor Swift in town, or finally the advent of weather that felt like summer, the Wales Millennium Centre was at less than full capacity for the WNO’s performance of Puccini’s Il trittico (1918). Perhaps it was the less than inspiring poster for the production, or maybe a lack…
A Tosca that captures the opera’s thuggish violence, Grange Festival
**** Tosca has always been a dark story of violence and cruelty, that crushes love and hope. The famous ending, here with the jealous singer falling backwards from the battlements of Castel Sant’Angelo with her chilling final words, is one of vengeance and hate not of love. That love has been ripped out of her…
An inventive new L’Incoronazione di Poppea
**** Grange Festival, Hampshire It would seem the contemporary version of achieving the feeling of absolute authority, power over everyone including sexual favours, and endless confidence, is an endless supply of cocaine. For director Walter Sutcliffe, there doesn’t seem to be a version for women – they still seem to need to achieve their status…
A fun-filled Daughter of the Regiment, Donizetti
Grange Park Opera. **** The Daughter of the Regiment is an operatic vehicle for some fine singing and musicianship, and fun. Anything that tries to do any more with it are just missing the point. Fortunately, John Doyle and Nikki Woollaston, co-directors of Grange Park Opera’s staging of Donizetti’s 1840 piece of fun and frolics…
Contemporary sensibilities have to be suspended for Platée, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Garsington Opera
*** Garsington’s updating and reworking of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s comedy dance opera Platée solves the Platée problem; it definitely needs something to lift it from far too cruel and nasty a tale for contemporary audiences. The story revolves around an ugly and deluded swamp nymph, Platée, tricked into thinking the philandering god Jupiter has fallen for…
Mid Wales Opera thrown lifeline
Mid Wales Opera which had been threatened with closure as a result of Arts Council Wales (ACW) cuts has been thrown a vital lifeline with a cash injection of £75,906 from Powys County Council’s grant funding programme, aimed at supporting and transforming the creative industries within the region. It is now asking its many supporters and…