Reviews
An exquisite Die Tote Stadt, Longborough Festival Opera
28th June 2022Loughborough 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 […]
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A more Kardashian than Kalashnikov Tamerlano, Grange Festival
26th June 2022Handel’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 […]
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A weird and wonderful Macbeth, Grange Festival
26th June 2022Directed 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, […]
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A psychological journey into Onegin at Opera Holland Park
13th June 2022It 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 […]
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A sunny seaside Cosi fan tutte at Garsington Opera
13th June 2022I 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 […]
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An Arcadian idyll: Orfeo at Garsington Opera
13th June 2022One 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 […]
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Siegfried, Longborough Festival Opera
4th June 2022Longborough’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 […]
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A joyous The Gondoliers from Scottish Opera at Hackney Empire
1st April 2022The overarching feeling of Scottish Opera’s The Gondoliers at London’s Hackney Empire is joyful exuberance. It sounds a fanfare for the pleasure of live performance returning after the long darkness of this dreadful pandemic; a splendidly staged, marvellously sung and genuinely funny evening of Gilbert & Sullivan. The opera has particular interest to aficionados, the […]
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Don Giovanni, to hell and back
18th March 2022Don GiovanniWelsh National OperaWales Millennium Centre By Mike Smith The concept behind this take on the Mozart moral tale is Rodin’s The Gates of Hell, a monolithic bronze works, with human figures cast into the metal – as becomes the fate of the great seducer Don Giovanni. Figures from the vast masterpiece were also created […]
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Life’s a beach on Alcina’s love island
8th February 2022It is intriguing that a wave of Alcinas is hitting our opera houses. Opera North has dived in first with a pared down Handelian adventure for this Baroque menage or menagerie a cinq on the sorceress’ love island. Characters wonder on stage and wonder off again, usually after singing but not always, and there is […]
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