Author: Robin Burfield
Intimate and contrasting staging, Double Bill, Waterperry Opera
Waterperry Opera Festival’ s new double bill of Acis and Galatea billed with Dido and Aeneas shows how effective the intimate staging in the Amphitheater is with a small cast taking different roles in the two operas. The Dido and Aeneas is played mainly by fire light and takes a particularly dark interpretation of the…
A large tot of happiness from ENO’s Pinafore
HMS Pinafore at English National Opera is a joyous entertainment that revels in the humour while ensuring the highest standards of musicianship. It is, shock horror, enjoyable. Yet it is a mark of our strange times when performing Gilbert and Sullivan seems quite brave and some companies would fret themselves onto a woke apoplexy performing…
No need for laying it on with a trowel with this clean if grubby Il tabarro from Mid Wales Opera
It is a challenging enterprise to take opera out to smaller venues at the best of times let alone when audiences are still wary in Covid days but it is one that Mid Wales Opera with Richard Studer and Jonathan Lyness at the tiller do with a sure touch and excellent musicianship. The combination of…
Chamber Philharmonia Cologne, Llandaff Cathedral
The Chamber Philharmonia Cologne open the Welsh leg of their seemingly never ending touring schedule at Llandaff Cathedral with a concert comprising virtuosic playing of Vivaldi, Mozart, JS Bach, Rossini and a show stopping Paganini. With solo clarinetist Senne Coomans and Cello soloist Christoph M. Jahn, the programme included much loved favourites but also works…