Opera Reviews
Prom 11: Wilson, Creswell, BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, WigglesworthSunday, 24 July 2016
It's not often you think you detect a future Brünnhilde in a soprano performing a great Verdi role, but that was the case when American Tamara Wilson made her UK debut last autumn as a stunning Leonora in the ENO production of Verdi's The Force of Destiny. So would she sing the Ring? Not for 10 years at least, she said. Read more... |
The Golden Dragon, Music Theatre Wales, Buxton FestivalTuesday, 19 July 2016
It’s the kitchen of a Thai-Chinese-Vietnamese fast food restaurant. The onstage orchestra wear sweatbands and T-shirts, and a red work surface stretches across the stage. As the four chefs take the stage, the clatter of pans and knives is first noise, then a rhythm, then an overture of sizzling, clanging, chopping and hissing sounds that spreads throughout the whole orchestra. Read more... |
Jenůfa, Longborough Festival OperaMonday, 18 July 2016
Quite apart from its inherent power, Jenůfa always amazes me by the way it seems to pluck a new language out of thin air, then use it to carry one of the most moving and emotionally truthful works in the repertory. Its curiously staccato form of lyricism lays heavy demands on singers trained in Wagner or Verdi. Read more... |
Prom 2: Boris Godunov, Royal Opera, PappanoSunday, 17 July 2016
The Royal Opera’s Boris Godunov production made the short trip from Covent Garden to South Ken for the company’s appearance at the 2016 Proms. The opera (here in its original 1869 version) is a good choice for concert presentation: as Antonio Pappano writes in the programme, much of its music approaches oratorio. That is particularly true of the choral numbers, and the work is a tour de force for the Royal Opera Chorus. Read more... |
Falstaff, CBSO, Gardner, Symphony Hall BirminghamThursday, 14 July 2016
Edward Gardner gives the downbeat, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra bursts into Verdi’s great opening guffaw. Enter stage left Graham Clark, as Dr Caius. Enter stage right Ambrogio Maestri, as Falstaff. And before a note has been sung, the audience is laughing. I know that in the post-Dumpygate era we’re not supposed to discuss a singer’s physical appearance. Read more... |
Leonore, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Buxton FestivalSunday, 10 July 2016
The first two of the three in-house opera productions in this year’s Buxton Festival could be bracketed under a slogan of "love stories, Jim – but not quite as we know them". Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi is, of course, Romeo and Juliet … sort of. She comes round in time to sing a duet with Romeo, who is himself a mezzo en travesti, so it’s not Shakespeare. More of that later. Read more... |
The Magic Flute, Iford Manor GardenSaturday, 09 July 2016
To reach Sarastro's temple of wisdom, you have to climb a series of exquisitely manicured terraces to a tiny cloister in one of the world's great gardens. Iford Arts have been inviting high-quality small opera companies to perform and produce their own operas since 2005. Charles Court Opera, paragon of G&S and boutique panto, was the right team to ask to provide a Magic Flute tailored for a cast of nine and an audience of 80. Read more... |
Il Trovatore, Royal OperaWednesday, 06 July 2016
That often-repeated truism about Verdi's craziest melodrama, that it needs four of the world's greatest voices, makes no mention of acting ability. Given the top-notch international approach to this kind of opera, impressively fielded by what's called "Cast A" here, German director David Bösch was right to build a dark, consistent visual world around mostly stand-and-deliver performances rather than demand too much of his stars. Read more... |
Götterdämmerung, Opera North, Southbank CentreMonday, 04 July 2016
And so it ends: Hagen drowns, Valhalla burns, and the ring returns to the Rhine, while somewhere beneath – Wagner’s dawn trumpets sounding faintly in the distance – the dwarf Alberich continues his lonely scheming. It would be hard to find a more apt conclusion to a week of power-grabbing and back-stabbing than Götterdämmerung, and harder still to see its climactic conflagration as anything other than horribly prophetic. Read more... |
Siegfried, Opera North, Southbank CentreSaturday, 02 July 2016
For some of us, Siegfried is a perfect opera. Like L.627 it stubbornly observes the Aristotelian rules of space and time to cut a generous slice of life. There are almost no set-pieces to break the flow of one-on-one conversations, accusations, confessions, arguments. These encounters are inevitably stifled by a concert staging, where singers address themselves to us, never to each other. Read more... |
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