Grange Park Opera
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…
A Pre-Raphaelite searing delight: Tristan und Isolde, Grange Park Opera
***** Take singers in fabulous voice, the Gascoigne orchestra luxuriating in Wagner’s exquisite music and a visually and theatrically intelligent and beautiful production and you have Grange Park Opera’s life-affirming Tristan und Isolde. From those unmistakable opening sounds rising from the orchestra, under Stephen Barlow’s conducting, in the small and intimate Grange Park auditorium it…
Passion and control; Werther at Grange Park Opera
**** John Doyle’s stark yet still beautiful staging of Massenet’s Werther continued what seems a probably unintended season of productions where the soprano dominates even if, as here, a man has the title role. The Gascoigne Orchestra conducted by Christopher Hopkins, sweeping along with the intense score, makes full affect with Massenet’s grand climatic moments….
Feisty Tosca fights the fascists at Grange Park Opera
**** Grange Park has brought together a powerful cast for this revival of Peter Relton’s 2017 direction of Tosca, with similarly stentorian conducting of the BBC Concert Orchestra by Mark Shanahan. While I am unfamiliar with the 2017 original show that is now revived by Stephen Medcalf, it remains the performance of the cast and…
A sublime Otello at Grange Park Opera
The dark side dominates in David Alden’s sombre Otello for Grange Park Opera. While the tragedy is Otello and Desdemona, the focus of this production is not only how Iago brings about the fatal suspicion, but sadistically enjoys watching the pain he brings about. Yes, with his seductive and glowing baritone Simon Keenlyside excelled as…
Natalya Romaniw can tell Houston that having survived Covid and lockdown there really isn’t a problem
It is a very long way between lockdown in Cardiff and rehearsing in Texas for the opening of Houston Grand Opera Dialogue of the Carmelites in Texas. For soprano Natalya Romaniw that journey, from the cancellation mid run of Madam Butterfly at English National Opera in 2020 to February 2022’s opening of the Poulenc opera,…
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…