Reviews
The Golden Dragon; Opera: Passion, Power and Politics – review
Birmingham Rep; V&A, London Peter Eötvös’s tragicomic opera about a Chinese immigrant worker cuts to the quick in Music Theatre Wales’s visceral production. At the V&A, hold on to your headphones… At first sight a jaunty skit on life in a Chinese restaurant –...
Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice at Lyric Opera of Chicago
The roles of Orphée, Eurydice, and Amour are sung by Dmitry Korchak, Adrianna Chuchman, and Lauren Snouffer. Dance sequences are performed by members of the Joffrey Ballet. The Lyric Opera Orchestra is conducted by Harry Bicket, while the Lyric Opera Chorus has been...
Review: Arabella at Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto, Oct. 5 2017
Richard Strauss’s Arabella (1933) had its triumphant Canadian premiere last night, opening the Canadian Opera Company’s 17/18 season. It is one of those operas that comes saddled with a ‘reputation,' often viewed as less than top drawer Strauss; hindered by creaky...
Michelle DeYoung, Mahler Symphony no 3 London
The concert was live streamed worldwide, an indication of just how important this concert was, for it marks the Philharmonia's 34-year relationship with Salonen. I missed the first concert in 1983 when a very young Salonen substituted at a few days’ notice. The score...
Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande CD review – luxury casting and vivid performances under Rattle and Sellars
Kozena/Fink/Gerhaher/Finley/Selig/LSO/LSC/Rattle LSO Live The LSO’s January 2016 performances of Debussy’s opera at the Barbican in London, conducted by Simon Rattle and semi-staged by Peter Sellars, have been beautifully transferred to CD, and the result is a credit...
Schubert: Der Einsame CD review – Young tenor Ilker Arcayürek is in a class on his own
Arcayürek/Lepper (Champs Hill) It’s been a while since we’ve had a debut disc as engaging as this. Born in Istanbul, raised in Vienna, Ilker Arcayürek has the kind of airy, easily ringing tenor that puts across words beautifully, with power in reserve yet a hint of...
King Arthur at the Barbican: a semi-opera for the ‘Brexit Age’
Do we need to know the political context in which a work was created in order to fully appreciate its ‘worth’? Does that political context need to be made ‘relevant’ to present audiences? There are no simple or ‘right’ answers to those questions, but in the light of...
Elder conducts Lohengrin
There have been dozens of capable, and more than capable, recordings of Lohengrin. Among the most-often praised are the Sawallisch/Bayreuth (1962), Kempe (1963), Solti (1985), and Abbado (1991). Recording a major Wagner opera involves heavy costs that a record company...
King Arthur review – home truths with Purcell transposed to the age of Brexit
Barbican, London Daisy Evan’s bold new version – reflecting on national identity – was strongly performed, but the update failed to bring much needed coherence to Dryden’s vast text Purcell’s King Arthur has long been a problematic work. It’s not quite an opera, not...
Anne Schwanewilms sings Schreker, Schubert, Liszt and Korngold
On a day when events in Las Vegas cast a shadow over much of the news this was not the most comfortable recital to sit through for many reasons. The chosen repertoire did, at times, feel unduly heavy - and very Germanic - but it was also unevenly sung. Indeed, it was...
Review: Elektra, War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, Sept. 19, 2017
Keith Warner's frenetic, conceptually driven production of Richard Strauss's Elektra (1909) reinforced a musically brilliant performance of this brutal, uncompromising opera centered on a mythic daughter's longing for revenge of the murder of her father, Agamemnon, by...
Premiere Recording: Mayr’s Telemaco nell’isola di Calipso (1797)
No sooner had I drafted my review of Simon Mayr’s Medea in Corinto, recently posted on OperaToday.com, than the world-premiere recording of Mayr’s Telemaco nell’Isola di Calipso reached me, an opera from 16 years earlier, when Mayr was 34 years old. Franz Hauk,...