Author: Mike Smith
ENO’s 2021-22 plans including Les Dennis in Pinafore
English National Opera’s 2021/22 season will include four new productions, including comedian Les Dennis performing in HMS Pinafore. Director Cal McCrystal returns to direct the first production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore in the company’s history; Richard Jones directs Wagner’s The Valkyrie, the first production in a new Ring Cycle to be staged at…
A new Butterfly, a delayed migration-themed opera and three revivals for Welsh National Opera’s 21-22 season
Welsh National Opera brings back the 1980s Giles Havergal production of Rossini’s Barber of Seville to Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff in September, marking the company’s return to the stage. The company had performed a slapstick new co-production with Grand Théâtre de Genève in 2016 but has reverted to the near-40 year old show to…
Irish National Opera 2021-22 season underway
Irish National Opera ‘s diverse 2021-22 season is now underway with screenings of Edwina Casey’s new film of Peter Maxwell Davies’ chamber opera, The Lighthouse. “It’s been a most exciting year at INO,” says artistic director, Fergus Sheil. “Hectic, changeable, unpredictable and challenging. And yet peculiarly rewarding as the best laid plans had to be…
Dorothea Herbert’s Glyndebourne debut and first album release
German dramatic soprano Dorothea Herbert joins Glyndebourne Touring Opera as Leonore inFrederic Wake-Walker’s new production of Fidelio, scheduled to open on Friday 8 October. The chanceto perform at the Sussex opera house is sure to stir strong emotions in a singer who auditioned for theGlyndebourne Festival Chorus without success during her student days. “It’s a…
Opera North to perform five new productions for 2021/22
Opera North has announced five new productions for its 2021/22 season and a programme of live music in the Howard Assembly Room, as it also reopens its buildings in central Leeds following a transformational £18 million capital redevelopment programme, Music Works. The Company says that the completion of Music Works will see Opera North move…
WNO General Director Aidan Lang talks about the company’s 75th anniversary
As one might imagine, our plans for major productions to mark the 75 years have been shelved. We have, however, created two short films to mark the occasion. We commissioned a poem by Ifor ap Glyn, the National Poet of Wales, called Intermezzo, and this is performed by a distinguished cast of Welsh luminaries in…
A young and vibrant Figaro at Opera Holland Park
Adversity sometimes brings unexpected opportunity. In this case the requirements of social distancing was overcome by Opera Holland Park by borrowing free standing chairs from other companies and creating a very relaxed, informal setting for the audience to enjoy the Young Artists’ performance of Figaro. Of course, it means far smaller audiences than usual but…
Glorious singing in Onegin at Garsington
Michael Boyd’s production makes excellent use of the glass pavilion at Garsington with peasants visible as they approach the stage and similarly the pairs of lovers (or not lovers in Onegin and Tatyana’s case) walking around the outside of the auditorium. However, it was distracting having some scenes overshadowed by unnecessary although stylish additions such…
Cosi under the big top at Longborough
It would have probably been too obvious to cast Don Alfonso as a ring master in the big top seeing we were indeed watching and listening to Cosi in a circus tent at Longborough Festival Opera. Instead, he is a card shark, playing on Guglielomo and Ferrando presumably slightly nouveau twit gullibility to firstly part…
Pountney’s take on Ivan the Terrible at Grange Park Opera
David Pountney production of Ivan the Terrible for Grange Park Opera is an uncharacteristically sedate affair, lacking in the excesses of violence or sex, psychological acrobatics or quirkiness – and for once it could actually have done with some of this. With the pretty obvious exception of making Ivan the Terrible a Stalin figure (some may…