A new show has opened for autumn at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. It’s called Rembrandt’s Light. It’s intelligent, empathetic, surprising and at one point breathtaking, and I urge you all to go and see it as soon as possible. Dulwich, the UK’s earliest purpose-built public picture gallery (it was founded in 1811), was designed…
McGregor’s Dance in ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’ Gets the Youth Backing
Dancers in the Underworld. Company Wayne London was in the eye of a rainstorm on the opening night of Orpheus and Eurydice at the ENO so I was relieved to step into the Colosseum’s warm, crimson interior and bound up the stairs to my seat. In the dress circle, people were filming the grand…
Pietà Premieres in London: Interview with composer Richard Blackford
In June 2019 Frances Wilson reviewed Pietà, a new choral work by Richard Blackford for The Cross-Eyed Pianist. Drawing on the theme of maternal grief and loss, Blackford took as his starting point the Stabat Mater. It is a hymn to Mary, and portrays her suffering as Jesus Christ’s mother at his crucifixion. In his exploration…
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…
Interview: Star Baritone Jacques Imbrailo
Jacques Imbrailo is singing in Jules Massenet’s Werther (see our review here) at the Royal Opera House and then he is off around the world on various singing engagements through 2020. In April this year, this rising star among baritones earned great reviews in Billy Budd and his Albert in Werther is another…
Werther: A Romance Worthy of Revival
Isabel Leonard, Charlotte. Juan Diego Flórez, Werther. As I step into the Royal Opera House’s stylish new café, there is the familiar Covent Garden buzz. It’s the opening night of Werther, and also the start of the new opera season. The talking points are Joyce di Donato’s upcoming title role in Agrippina. She was…
Kollwitz’s War and Grief at the British Museum
‘Woman with Dead Child, 1903. Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) Käthe Kollwitz, née Schmidt, is not a name I had come across in the art world until the British Museum’s show. Born in 1867, in Königsberg, East Prussia, Kollwitz established herself as a leading, influential graphic artist by the time the First World War came about….
“It feels like love”: Barb Jungr’s ‘Bob, Brel and Me’
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.
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…
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