Reviews
The Consul review – Menotti’s clunky opera resists Guildhall’s best efforts
Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London A talented team do their best to breathe life into Menotti’s clumsy opera with its B-movie score and nightmarish tale of bureaucracy and secret police It’s hard to believe now that in the 1950s and 60s Gian Carlo...
Lucia di Lammermoor review – bloody and convincing
Royal Opera House, London Katie Mitchell’s intelligent production of Donizetti’s opera - here on its first revival - takes plenty of worthwhile liberties, and soprano Lisette Oropesa as Lucia is sensational Last April, Katie Mitchell was upfront about the...
Richard Jones’s Rodelinda returns to ENO
An indignant sense of unjust usurpation was probably just as prevalent in Hanoverian London - that is, among those Jacobites who sought to re-establish a Stuart monarchy. But, despite the large map of Milan which looms from the wall of the political...
Review: Canadian Opera Company’s Centre Stage Gala featuring the Ensemble Studio Competition, Nov. 1, 2017
On Nov. 1, 2017, the Canadian Opera Company presented its annual Centre Stage Gala featuring the Ensemble Studio Competition. The order and wording of this title is not without significance. The evening is as much about the glittering, fundraising dinner that takes...
Rodelinda review – top-notch cast embrace dark vision of Handel
By: George Hall for the Guardian (UK) Coliseum, London In its original 1724 form, Handel’s opera dealt with complex political and amorous machinations among a seventh-century ruling Lombard elite. Richard Jones’s 2014 production moves the action to fascist Italy,...
Sondra Radvanovsky gives a flawless recital
Reviewing a concert given by an artist with a voice like the stentorian soprano Sondra Radvanovsky has, is a very difficult task for a music critic. After all, how can one criticize something that is flawless! Such was my experience after attending the recital she...
The Genius of Purcell: Carolyn Sampson and The King’s Consort at the Wigmore Hall
Framed at the centre of the platform by bass violist Reiko Ichise and theorbo player Lynda Sayce, with violinists Cecilia Bernardini and Huw Daniel to right and left, and Robert King’s harpsichord and chamber organ to the rear, Sampson looked and sounded the epitome...
Review: Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas; Rolfe’s Aeneas and Dido, Oct. 21, 2017
To open its 17/18 farewell season on October 21, Toronto Masque Theatre presented a double bill of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Aeneas and Dido, a new work with music by James Rolfe and libretto by André Alexis. Specializing in the artistic fusion of music,...
Hamlet review – careers are made in a ferociously powerful trip to Elsinore
By: Tim Ashley for the Guardian (UK) Glyndebourne, Sussex Given its world premiere at Glyndebourne earlier this year, Brett Dean’s Hamlet, regarded by some as the most successful operatic adaptation to date of Shakespeare’s tragedy, has now entered the repertory for...
Written on Skin review – spare staging highlights richness of Benjamin’s opera
West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge The Melos Sinfonia’s thrilling concert performance of George Benjamin’s intense, horrifying work was often more dramatic than full productions In the five years since its premiere at the Aix-en-Provence festival, Written on Skin has...
La Traviata review – McVicar’s Verdi is a gorgeous but stilted visual treat
By: Rowena Smith for the Guardian (UK) Theatre Royal, Glasgow David McVicar’s staging of La Traviata has proved to be the kind of enduring production that opera companies want to have in their repertoire. Having been much performed in recent years, it is now being...
Lucy Worsley’s Nights at the Opera review – dressing up, singing and sex
This brilliant show flitted from Covent Garden to Venice to Vienna and Milan in pursuit of the history of opera I haven’t always had the best relationship with opera. My parents took me to a few – dress rehearsals – when I was a kid, probably with the aim of making me...