This is an important year for Maria Callas fans – this being the centenary year of her birth. Artistic tributes to La Divina, (Callas’s nickname), kicked off with Serbian performance artist, Marina Abramović, who used the English National Opera to explore her obsession with Callas. 7 Deaths of Maria Callas is no ordinary opera as you…
Category: new opera
Dying inside: ‘7 Deaths of Maria Callas’, English National Opera, London
‘7 Deaths of Maria Callas’ is described as an “opera project”, the brainchild of performance artist Marina Abramović. The timing is ideal – English National Opera (ENO) describes the piece as “celebratory”, as we approach the centenary of Callas’s birth on 2 December; while Abramović is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the…
Past and present collide: Saariaho, ‘Innocence’, Royal Opera House, London
Perhaps the most compelling testament to the impact of ‘Innocence’ is that I’ve thought about little else since the curtain fell. Knowing I would want to write about it, I’ve felt the intricacies of the piece turning round in my mind, dovetailing with each other, not unlike the interlocking 3D jigsaw of a set that…
‘A Child in Striped Pyjamas’ – John Boyne’s masterpiece in a new opera by Noah Max
John Boyne’s masterpiece The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas still features regularly on international bestseller lists nearly two decades after its publication. Boyne’s story is a symbolic exploration of why the Holocaust is so traumatic: it demonstrates the relentlessly organised barbarity of which humanity is capable. The book has been adapted for cinema, theatre and…
Handmaid’s Tale – Opera For Our Time
When Margaret Atwood’s published The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985 it caused a stir. In the author’s dystopian novel, young women who have transgressed the societal rules of authoritarian republic Gilead, are sentenced to spend the rest of their child-bearing years producing offspring for childless couples. You don’t need to look very far to understand where Canadian Atwood got her…
Much to admire in Philip Glass’s Satyagraha at ENO
In the past fifty years, avant-garde thinker, artist, composer, Philip Glass, has notched up thirty operas, three more than the prolific Verdi. It’s an amazing achievement for a contemporary living composer and there is no doubt that Glass’s minimalist scores have done much to break open the opera genre. It is only fitting therefore that…
An Electrifying ‘Mask of Orpheus’ at ENO
Aerialists, Matthew Smith (Orpheus Hero) and Alfa Marks (Eurydice Hero) Commissioned by ENO, The Mask of Orpheus, caused quite a stir when it premiered at the Coliseum in 1986. Some heralded it as a genius work. Others found it difficult, which probably explains why it has not been fully staged again until now….
Benjamin Britten and the Challenge of Singing
Portrait of Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten by Kenneth Green 1943 The voice is an extraordinary thing. Air pumped from our lungs, passes over the fleshy folds in our throat, to emit a full spectrum of sounds. Some more pleasing than others. Last weekend I shouted and screamed so hard at a football…
Classical Opera Goes Virtual
Tim Benjamin is not the first composer to use digital sound and music in opera. Modern opera is all about experimentation and if you are a small opera company with constrained budgets, virtual is the way to go if you want a chorus in the score! But this is not quite Tim Benjamin’s story,…
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