Reviews
Review: Operettts, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, Toronto, Sept. 23, 2017
Did you ever wonder what happens when three tenors share the concert stage? Operettts—the three ‘t’s standing for each tenor—offered a gleefully amusing answer in the form of a rivalry between three divos all on one stage, performing operetta’s greatest hits. This...
Review: Star Singers Lift a Muddled ‘Norma’ at the Metropolitan Opera
Bellini’s 1831 opera “Norma,” which opened the Metropolitan Opera’s season on Monday, is rich in themes that resonate in today’s political and social climate. Brutal, boorish clashes of culture and religion drive the story. The title character, a high priestess of a...
Choral at Cadogan: The Tallis Scholars open a new season
This, and the striking opening of the first piece, Palestrina’s motet Laudate pueri, set me ruminating about nature of an ‘ensemble sound’, and although the following tangential digression might be a little indulgent, it is not irrelevant to my experience and review...
Stars of Lyric Opera 2017, Millennium Park, Chicago
The Lyric Opera Orchestra and the Lyric Opera Chorus, under the direction of Sir Andrew Davis and Michael Black respectively, provided excellent accompaniment. Indeed, several of the selections showcased the talents of both groups as a significant part of this...
Review: A Verlaine Songbook
Today, singers and their pianists are often more willing also to explore repertory by composers who are much less well known. Also, a CD can carry much more music than the typical LP. Carolyn Sampson—an established light soprano—here offers an entire, well-stocked...
Oedipe review – Jurowski makes case for Enescu’s ‘lost masterpiece’
Royal Festival Hall, London The anti-Freudian Oedipus opera may not flawless, but this performance with the LPO was a superb and beautiful achievement The London Philharmonic opened its new season with a concert performance of Oedipe, George Enescu’s only opera, first...
Khovanshchina review – Russia’s tragedy becomes the world’s in compelling revival
Millennium Centre, Cardiff Welsh National Opera mark the centenary of the 1917 revolutions in this chilling, brilliantly designed production of Mussorgsky’s complex opera Welsh National Opera’s new season forms part of Russia 17, Wales’s arts-wide commemoration of the...
Die Zauberflöte at the ROH: radiant and eternal
As we journey from the dungeon-esque darkness of the Queen’s nocturnal demesne towards the gleaming sun-disc which bathes the final chorus in the luminosity of enlightenment, a Dantesque night is truly turned into day. However, in 2013, I found the performance, while...
Senza Sangue/Bluebeard’s Castle; The Damnation of Faust/Stravinsky ballet music – review
Hackney Empire, London/Barbican A gun-toting woman craves revenge in a gloriously tense European double-header in Hackney. Meanwhile Simon Rattle’s on a roll… Secrets to hide. Secrets to discover. The two characters in Péter Eötvös’s one-act opera Senza Sangue have as...
Opera at Home: A Review of Layla Claire’s Songbird
Lyric soprano Layla Claire, who hails from Penticton, B.C., was a graduate of the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist program and made her debut on that storied stage as Tebaldo in Don Carlos in 2010. Since then, her career has advanced quickly,with...
A Mysterious Lucia at Forest Lawn
Conductor Isaac Selya and his orchestra of twenty-seven played the overture with its emotion-inducing harp music as the red sun slipped behind the mountains, leaving orange clouds and purple shadows to introduce the mysteries of night. Director and Designer Josh Shaw...
This is Rattle: Blazing Berlioz at the Barbican Hall
If Simon Rattle can achieve such excellence in the cramped confines of the Barbican Hall, imagine how Britain's cultural life would be transformed if a world class concert hall with state of the art facilities were built. The arts are central to the nation's economy...