19th century
theartsdesk in Riga - 43,290 Latvians sing and dance for their countryTuesday, 24 July 2018
"They incessantly break down, destroy and fragment the mistrust that exists among people," wrote a Latvian journalist of a folklore group during the start of the Baltic countries' "singing revolution" against Soviet rule in 1988. This is the recent... Read more... |
L'Ange de Nisida / JPYAP Summer Programme, Royal Opera - buoyant touch in Donizetti bagatelleThursday, 19 July 2018
Two rules should help the non-Donizettian: avoid all stagings of the prolific Bergamasco's nearly 70 operas other than the comedies; and seek the guarantee of top bel canto stylists. Conductor Mark Elder and soprano Joyce El-Khoury certainly fit... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The PianoTuesday, 17 July 2018
The first words we hear in The Piano are the thoughts of Holly Hunter’s Ada, and they set up the film’s premise perfectly: “I have not spoken since I was six years old. No one knows why… not even me. My father says it is a dark talent …Today he... Read more... |
The King and I, London Palladium review - classic musical reborn with modern sensibilitiesWednesday, 04 July 2018
Shall we dodge? (One, two, three) No, the brilliance of Bartlett Sher’s Tony-winning Lincoln Center revival – first on Broadway in 2015, now gracing the West End, with its original leads – is that it faces the problematic elements of Rodgers... Read more... |
Manchester Collective, Chetham's, Manchester review - flair and varietyFriday, 29 June 2018
Manchester Collective is a new and enterprising group of musicians determined not just to create performances of high quality but to offer a new way in which the performances themselves are done. They started from scratch at the end of 2016, and I... Read more... |
La Traviata, Longborough Festival review - muddled director, vocal mixed bagMonday, 25 June 2018
One wearies of quarrelling with opera directors’ concepts. But what’s the alternative? To ignore or acquiesce in crude, approximate reimaginings that, like Daisy Evans's new La Traviata at Longborough, stuff a work any old how into some snappy,... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Paris - following in the footsteps of GounodSunday, 24 June 2018
It’s a truism that history is written by the victors, but nowhere in classical music is the argument made more persuasively than in the legacy and reputation of Charles Gounod. In a year in which you can hardly move for Bernstein and Debussy-related... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Leipzig's Blüthner Piano Factory - a perfect family businessWednesday, 20 June 2018
Have you ever wondered why the Steinway grand piano is invariably the instrument of choice in every hall you visit, great or small? Why do the halls in question not offer a choice between two or three pianos of different manufacture, as so many did... Read more... |
Falstaff, Garsington Opera review - Sir John under pressureMonday, 18 June 2018
All those pranks, set-ups, fake letters and disguises, they just keep coming thick and fast in Verdi’s Falstaff. The score has irresistible energy and momentum. The composer made sure in his last opera that when the fantasies, schemes and hopes of... Read more... |
Un ballo in maschera, Grange Park Opera review – singing out against the American grainMonday, 11 June 2018
Stumble across Grange Park Opera’s new brick-clad “Theatre in the Woods”, nestled amid a labyrinth of gardens and orchards next to the rambling Tudor pile of West Horsley Place in Surrey, and on a mild June evening you may feel as if you have fallen... Read more... |
Lohengrin, Royal Opera review - swan mystery musically illuminatedFriday, 08 June 2018
It's awfully long for a fairytale in which a mystery prince helps a damsel in distress, and she asks him the question she shouldn't. Myth tends to go deeper, as Wagner did in The Ring of the Nibelung after Lohengrin. Here he captures the magic of... Read more... |
Gringytė, Williams, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - living in the momentFriday, 01 June 2018
How to judge a genius who died at 25? Gerald Larner, in his programme note for this concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, suggests that Lili Boulanger’s tragically early death was actually central to her achievement. She knew she... Read more... |
