L’Orontea by Cesti in Frankfurt

First we discovered Monteverdi, then Cavalli; now Cesti who like his Venetian contemporaries wrote moralistic comic pieces set in classical times, love and lust generally triumphing over reason and sobriety. The Frankfurt staging of L’Orontea was my first encounter with…

Teseo at the Karlsruhe Handel Festival

Although we in Britain claim Handel as our own and have been responsible for many revivals of his operas in recent years, there are important Händel (as he should be called) festivals in Germany; in Halle (his birthplace, Göttingen and…

Roderick Williams: French Song Recital

I have said before, and I will say again, that for concert series which have good price/quality ratio I know nothing better venue than the Wesley Centre in Harrogate. For £6 a seat for an hour at Monday lunchtimes, you…

Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride in Geneva

Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride is a noble piece in which the composer eliminates the trills and frills of the baroque for a simple but intense and moving recreation of the Greek original. Sadly, its presentation at Geneva’s Grand Théâtre was…

Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Medea in Basel

I am familiar with Euripides’ play Medea and have been impressed by performances of Cherubini’s opera based on it,  but I did not anticipate the huge impact made by Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s version recently presented at Basel. The work itself is…

Donizetti’s Viva la Mamma in Biel

Donizetti’s comic piece Le convenienze ed il convenienze teatrali, a parody of the 19th century opera world is tremendous fun. Perhaps the reason why it is not often performed is its unwieldy title which can be translated as “The Conventions…

Festival of Czech Chamber Music at the RNCM

Each January at the Royal Northern College of Manchester there is a chamber music festival, focusing on a particular theme and presenting some prominent musicians alongside the talent of the College’s own students. This year it was Czech music, or…

My Concert Highlights 2014

Anna Prohaska‘s outstanding Lieder recital at Edinburgh: vocal assurance, combined with great  interpretive skills and artistic integrity Thomas Allen‘s defiant and moving Winterreise in Oxford: an astonishing (and for me reassuring) celebration of reaching 70, and part of the extraordinary…

My Opera Highlights 2014

DIRECTORS Giorgio Barberio Corsetti  & Pierrick Sorin: La Pietra del Paragone,  Paris Châtelet Balazs Kovalik: Die Frau ohne Schatten, Leipzig; and Blood Wedding, Budapest   DESIGNERS Giorgio Barberio Corsetti  & Pierrick Sorin: La Pietra del Paragone,  Paris Châtelet Chantal Thomas:…

Friedenstag by Richard Strauss in Kaiserslautern

Friedenstag by Richard Strauss is a rarity. Why? The music is attractive and dramatic, in a Wagnerian mode, even if at times a little too obvious, as when it seeks to communicate militaristic ideals. The final chorus is, indeed, highly…

Ravel/Stravinsky Double Bill in Karlsruhe

In Karlsruhe for an apparently appealing pairing of Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges and Stravinsky’s Rossignol. The presentation purported to find in these two works a common response to the tragedy of World War I. To see Ravel’s child and…

Performances of Janáček and Szokolay in Central Europe

Two shortish operas from Central Europe seen in Central Europe: Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen at the Staatsoper Vienna and (less familiar to Western Europeans) Szokolay’s Blood Wedding in Budapest. Both were played without an interval, so we were out of…

Schubert’s complete Rosamunde in Vienna

It was certainly enticing. The illustrious Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the venerable Nikolaus Harnoncourt were at home in the Musikverein giving a rare outing for the complete incidental music which Schubert wrote for the play Rosamunde. In some respects, it…

UK première of Ingmar Villqvist’s Helver’s Night

All credit to the Company of Angels who, with support from the University of York and the EU Cultural Programme enterprisingly staged the UK première of  Ingmar Villqvist’s piece, Helver’s Night, at the York Theatre Royal Studio.  Villqvist is the…

Cédric Tiberghien’s Bartok Piano Recital

An all-Bartok piano recital? In Harrogate? On a Monday lunchtime? You might not have expected much . But wait a moment! This is the Wesley Centre (previously known as Chapel) with its famous and wonderful Yamaha piano, and this is…

Monteverdi’s Poppea and Handel’s Ottone in Yorkshire

Those who complain when the settings of opera are updated to a modern period would have benefited from comparing the productions of two baroque operas performed in Yorkshire this week: Opera North with Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea at Leeds and…

Oxford Lieder and the Schubert Project

Now you might think that Oxford Lieder with its Schubert Project boldly presenting all of Schubert’s songs was biting off more than can be chewed, or at least risked convincing its audiences that with such a multitude there must be…

Die Winterreise in Oxford by Thomas Allen (at 70)

Three days of Schubert Lieder at Oxford which made one gasp in astonishment at his extraordinary powers of invention, in capturing in song the heights and depths of human emotions. While many of the songs were unfamiliar, this was not…

Pinter’s Betrayal in York

The enduring popularity of Pinter’s plays is both intriguing and reassuring: intriguing because it is not obvious why his work which is, for the most part, elusive should  have such appeal; reassuring because it reveals that in a period when,…

Chabrier’s L’etoile in Amsterdam

It was not a large audience at Amsterdam’s Musiektheater for Chabrier’s comic piece L’Etoile and the absentees missed a treat. The music is, of course, witty and inventive, but it needs finesse in the orchestra pit, idiomatic singing, well spoken…