Jack Holton (Anckarström) with Blaise Malaba (Ribbing) and Tom Mole (Horn). Like Shakespearean actors and concert pianists, opera singers are outsiders in today’s entertainment world of self-made performers boasting one million subscribers on their Youtube channel. Accessibility is of course a lovely idea and the internet has certainly provided an equal platform for…
Category: opera
Verdi’s Ballo in Maschera. A Revelation.
Verdi and the Naples censor when preparing “Ballo”, 1857–58, caricature by Delfico Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, Un Ballo in Maschera, nearly didn’t see the light of day. The problem lay in Italy’s troubled political situation and the opera’s libretto, based on the assassination of King Gustave III in 1793 during a masked ball. When…
Elizabeth Llewellyn In Fine Voice in Opera Holland Park’s ‘Manon Lescaut’.
It had been quite some time since I had last seen Manon Lescaut, Puccini’s early opera. Not since 2014 when leading man, Jonas Kaufmann, the Tom Jones of opera, topped the bill, playing an overly confident De Grieux at the Royal Opera House. Nevertheless I lapped up his ill-fated love affair with Latvian soprano,…
A Riveting Ripper at the Coliseum
Jack the Ripper’s frenzied killing spree in Victorian London has never ceased to fascinate and appall. Iain Bell, composer of the ambitious new opera of the same name, and his librettist Emma Jenkins, decided, when creating their new work, to rid the stage of his presence altogether and to focus instead on the Ripper’s…
McBurney’s Magic Flute Enchants Again.
Mozart’s Magic Flute is an unusual opera, full of Viennese slapstick, magic and strange journeys through a fairy-tale landscape. Emanuel Schikaneder, who wrote the libretto, was a theatre-manager, actor and most importantly, Mozart’s friend. The two relished working together and being both a little strapped for cash in 1791, they strove to create an opera…
‘The Merry Widow’ Comes of Age
‘Can you hold my drink so that I can leap over you,’ bellows a middle-aged woman in front of me to perfect strangers. Friday night at the Coliseum and some of the punters in the dress circle have been overdoing the Sauvignon. It’s also the opening night of The Merry Widow and all this boisterous…
Philip Glass’s Akhnaten at ENO
The audience settles, the house lights dim, ominous music begins to build in the orchestra pit. ‘Opened are the double doors of the horizon/Unlocked are its bolts’, the narrator intones. Welcome to 18th Dynasty Egypt as envisaged by American minimalist composer Philip Glass. You don’t have to be a fully paid-up Glasshead to enjoy the…
Soprano Romaniw Sparkles in Miller’s Revival of La Bohème at ENO
A true star, Romaniw brings further magic to what is already an arresting production.
Britten’s War Requiem finds new life with ENO’s staging
At the Coliseum to watch the first UK staging of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem on its opening night, I was curious to see how Turner prize-winning photographer, Wolfgang Tillmans would tackle this work as set designer. War Requiem’s reputation has soared since 1962, when it was first performed in Coventry Cathedral. As a choral work,…
The shudder that counts: ‘Salome’ at ENO
English National Opera’s 208/19 season opened with Richard Strauss’s dark and disturbing psycho-drama Salome in a visually striking and lyrically-sung new production.
ARTMUSELONDON 