Reviews

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

What did Alexander Scriabin have in common with Donald J. Trump? Small hands, that’s what. Scriabin’s 1897 piano concerto was an instant hit with similarly endowed artists, although it also won approval from Sergei Rachmaninov, whose mitts were mega-sized. Despite...

Writing of McDermott’s Satyagraha in 2010, one of my colleagues wrote, ‘There are so many amazing imagesin this production that it’s hard to take them all in at once’. Here, it’s more a case of the are so many diverse visual images that it’s hard to make them come...

Coliseum, London Phelim McDermott’s new production for ENO features some virtuoso turns and preserves the tragedy’s air of mystery, but at times lacks cohesion English National Opera’s new production of Aida is the work of Phelim McDermott, whose previous stagings for...

Romanian soprano Aurelia Florian sings Violetta in all ten performances (through October 17). She is young and pretty, her voice is strong and rich throughout all registers, and her high notes are splendid (she does not take the optional high E flat in the “Sempre...