Robert Howarth
Updated frivolity for L’Orfeo, Longborough Festival Opera
*** The staging of Longborough Festival Opera’s contrasts the playing of Monteverdi’s 1607 score by the Venetian Baroque period musicians of La Serenissima with a show that takes its theme from Glastonbury-style festivals and modern hospitals. So, in Olivia Fuchs production our Orfeo swaps his lyre for an electric guitar (fortunately it makes no sound)…
A more Kardashian than Kalashnikov Tamerlano, Grange Festival
Handel’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…