In a special one-nighter, Paris-based orchestra, Insula, performed its new, semi-staged production of Fidelio at the Barbican this week. Insula’s stop-off in London was part of Insula’s European tour, which ends in a staged version of the opera in Paris’s new concert hall, La Seine Musicale on 14th, 16th and 18th May In opera, semi-staged can mean as little as a…
Category: opera
Body horror: ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, at English National Opera
This icy, subtle production presents Margaret Atwood’s terrifying vision with a clear-sighted, almost detached precision. Poul Ruders’s score gets under your skin, amping up the tension as events come to a head, while the heart-breaking performances relentlessly deal the emotional blows. Opera as commentary, catharsis and conscience: brilliantly done. * ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ the opera,…
Così Fan Tutte in Coney Island: All the Fun of the Fair with Dazzling Mozart Score
Così Fan Tutte is arguably one of the world’s most loved operas. Librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte and Mozart chart the emotional journey of two couples; Fiordiligi and Ferrando, Dorabella (Fiordiligi’s sister) and Guglielmo. They are engaged to be married and still have everything to learn about love. Don Alfonso, self-made philosopher, bets with the two fiancés, that…
A Moving New Production of Cunning Little Vixen at ENO
Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen is a perplexing but masterful opera, full of darkness, yearning and joy. On the surface it is a fantastical story, that of a Vixen who is captured by a Forester and who escapes, after causing a minor Orwellian revolution amongst the hens. She falls for a Fox, and my apologies for the spoiler,…
Countertenor Orliński embraces film with Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater
On a wet February evening, I attend a cinematic event at London’s Soho Hotel. Countertenor, Jakub Jósef Orliński, fresh from his successes at the Royal Opera, is starring in a film of Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater. In the screening theatre, Orliński sits in the front row with an audience of journos, prs, record company execs behind him. …
Kitchen-sink drama: Handel, ‘Theodora’, at the Royal Opera House
Handel’s ‘Theodora’ is an oratorio. In other (well, more) words, it’s a vocal/choral work that would normally have a plot at its core, but presented as a purely aural experience. Traditionally, oratorios would be sung in concert with no staging, movement, or action to speak of. The music must propel any narrative, drive every reaction,…
In ENO’s Bohème Conductor Ben Glassberg Breathes New Life into Puccini’s Score.
It has been a few years since I last saw La Bohème performed at ENO. In 2019, soprano Natalya Romaniw, sang a magnificent Mimi in that mournful timbre of hers, beautifully conveying the soul of Puccini’s ill-fated seamstress. For the 2022 season, soprano, Sinéad Campbell-Wallace has taken on the iconic role. Her bright-sounding soprano couldn’t be more…
Retrospecstive 2021: slight return
One more look in the rear-view mirror before 2021 disappears completely… After the multi-course blowout of choosing 25 recordings of the year, this is more of a digestif, if you will. A few events and developments that gave me cause for celebration: one each for pop, classical, TV, media and film. Bon ‘Voyage’: the return…
Climbing the walls: ‘Jenůfa’, Royal Opera House
Perhaps it’s appropriate that the first opera I’ve seen at Covent Garden since lockdown is this unflinching depiction of confinement and familial dysfunction, Claus Guth’s new staging of Janáček’s masterpiece, ‘Jenůfa’. (Please beware spoilers in this piece – I’ll be roaming around the entirety of the plot, the better to discuss the production.) The drama…
Rock opera: ENO’s ‘Tosca’ at South Facing Festival
Once there was a time when I would have been fully on top of such exciting news: a rock festival just down the road at Crystal Palace Bowl. Only a few stops on the train, or a mere jaunt on the bus, without any need to negotiate the seething metropolis. In fact, the news reached…
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