Opera Reviews
London Contemporary Orchestra, Hugh Brunt, Aldwych StationTuesday, 28 May 2013
Three hundred years ago we danced and ate to art music. Before that we worshipped to it. In the 19th century we began to sit and stare at it. The immersive music movement of the past decade has moved things along again. Today we are encouraged to swim through performances, sniffing the music out, hunting it down. The latest ensemble to free themselves from the sit-and-stare model are the enterprising outfit, the London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO). Read more...
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Lohengrin, Welsh National OperaFriday, 24 May 2013
What is one to make of Lohengrin, Wagner’s last “opera” (as opposed to music drama), in this day and age? Is it a medieval romance, like Weber’s Freischütz but with a deus ex machina at the beginning rather than the end; or is it a nineteenth-century domestic melodrama in disguise, with the hero revealed in the bedroom scene as a Papal Nuncio travelling incognito. Why mustn’t Elsa ask his name? Read more... |
Falstaff, Glyndebourne Festival OperaMonday, 20 May 2013
In this revival of Richard Jones's 2009 production, the action has been very effectively shifted to post-war Windsor with Sir John Falstaff (Laurent Naouri) as down-at-heel gentry maintaining delusions of superiority, rubbing up against an ascendant middle class. Nannetta and Fenton are presumably about to play their part in the baby boom. Period features abound, from chintz and mock Tudor to soda siphons, troupes of Brownies and a Victrola cabinet. Read more... |
Ariadne auf Naxos, Glyndebourne Festival OperaSunday, 19 May 2013
The Major-Domo promises fireworks during the Prologue of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Katharina Thoma, the director of Glyndebourne’s new staging, drops a bombshell - actually several bombshells. Glyndebourne’s wartime history (as a refuge for evacuees) would seem to have chimed with the darker implications of the opera within - namely, the Composer’s opera seria of the title. Read more... |
La donna del lago, Royal OperaSaturday, 18 May 2013
I mean, really, what is the point of Rossini? That’s actually not as stupid as it sounds. No-one has ever mistaken any of his operas for taut music-drama, and even the best of them are peculiarly difficult to pull off because without first-rate singers, everything collapses. That is, without doubt, not a problem facing the Royal Opera’s new La donna del lago. Trust me: London hasn’t heard such spectacular Rossini singing in decades. Read more... |
Albert Herring, Opera NorthThursday, 16 May 2013
Staging Britten’s third opera in the round in a small performance space of the Howard Assembly Room makes complete sense. Albert Herring’s supporting cast of village grotesques are that little bit more oppressive when they’re singing yards away from your face. The effect is nicely claustrophobic too – after this, you somehow can’t imagine seeing this opera in a conventionally-sized opera house. Read more... |
The Pirates of Penzance, Scottish Opera, Theatre Royal, GlasgowThursday, 16 May 2013
Of all the Savoy operas, this merry clash of pirates, policemen and a Major-General flanked by an entire chorus of loving daughters finds Sullivan most in tune with the mid-19th century Italian opera he so lovingly spoofs. So why can’t Martin Lloyd-Evans’s production be similarly fleet-footed with Gilbert’s resourceful, literate lyrics and whimsical plotting? Read more... |
Wozzeck, English National OperaSunday, 12 May 2013
If you should take your seats prematurely in the London Coliseum you’ll find yourself confronted with a group of serving British soldiers. You’ll shift a little uneasily under their gaze. There they are, staring, smoking, loitering; there we are, on a visit to the opera. There’s a disconnect. Among those soldiers is Wozzeck (Leigh Melrose), the eponymous anti-hero of Alban Berg's operatic masterpiece. Read more... |
Don Carlo, Royal OperaSunday, 05 May 2013
An operatic truism still doing the rounds declares that for Verdi's Il trovatore you need four of the greatest singers in the world. For Don Carlo, his biggest opus in every way, you need six. Nicholas Hytner's Covent Garden staging hits the mark third time around with five, the exception being a very honourable replacement for what would have been an interesting piece of casting. Read more... |
La bohème, English National OperaTuesday, 30 April 2013
I’m not one to get misty-eyed over La bohème (unless it be a red mist of rage), but this second revival of Jonathan Miller’s production at English National Opera brought me closer than any yet to understanding the snuffling, lip-quivering reactions of those around me in the Coliseum stalls. And if it wasn’t exactly emotion that got me there, then perhaps it was something even better: sentimental delight in joyous, glorious music-making. Read more... |
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