A new album by Barb Jungr is always a cause for celebration, but it’s a particular delight to be able to write about what must be one of her very finest recordings. ‘Bob, Brel and Me’ is the kind of coherent, complete – and importantly, open-hearted and generous – release that makes a long-term fan like me want to take an armful of copies out and press them into the hands of friends, relatives, even unsuspecting passers-by.
Category: review
Mothers and Sons and L’arlesiana
Yvonne Howard, Rosa Mamai and L’innocente sung by Samantha Price. At a performance of L’Arlesiana at Opera Holland Park recently, I was bowled over by Yvonne Howard’s heart-breaking aria, Esser madre è un inferno (To be a mother is hell!). Howard as the long-suffering matriarch is superb. When she pleads for God to watch over her son,…
Iolanta: Coming Into the Light
Portrait of Peter Ilitsch Tchaikovsky by Nikolai Dimitriyevdi Kuznetsov 1893 Tchaikovsky’s philosophical and psychological opera, Iolanta, playing at Opera Holland Park, has been a big hit with critics and audiences alike this summer. It is easy to see why, with its starry line up of singers such as the soprano Natalya Romaniw together…
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,…
Olafur Eliasson’s Show: Pioneering and Powerful.
Beauty 1993 A trip to the Tate Modern almost always involves me taking a left at the Turbine Hall where I know I will end up in familiar art territory, one which preferably involves paint! Going right on the other hand, into the Blavatnik Building, constitutes more of an art departure for me: tech art…
Is This The Future of Opera? Youthful Exuberance for Opera Holland Park.
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…
The Strange World of Félix Vallotton
What exactly is going on in Félix Vallotton’s painting ‘Le Mensonge’ (‘The Lie’), above? A couple in evening dress are locked in an embrace in a plush interior. Yet all is not what it seems. Who’s the one being economical with the truth? Is it the woman – she of the scarlet dress and serpentine…
Pietà by Richard Blackford – world premiere at Poole Lighthouse
Pietà by Richard Blackford Jennifer Johnston, mezzo-sopranno Stephen Gadd, baritone Amy Dickson, saxophone with Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, Bournemouth Symphony Youth Chorus, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gavin Carr The Stabat Mater, a Medieval hymn which portrays Mary’s suffering as Christ’s mother during his Crucifixion, has been set to music by numerous composers, most notably Pergolesi,…
Dulwich Printmaking Show Impresses
Dorrit Black, Music, 1927-28 I had never heard of the Grosvenor School of Modern Art until I set foot in the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Founded by wood engraver, Iain Macnab in 1925, the Grosvenor School was different from other London-based art schools of the time. There were no exams, students enrolled on courses when they could,…
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…
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