London’s Conway Hall as Concert Venue
It was, for me, hugely nostalgic to return after fifty years to the Conway Hall in Red Lion Square. The Hall, a redoubtable fortress – I was going to say spiritual home – in London of rationalism, humanism and atheism…
Sean O’Casey’s Silver Tassie at the National Theatre
The Silver Tassie has achieved fame as a play in which Sean O’Casey moved away from naturalistic settings of life in Dublin tenements during the Irish revolution to multi-styled dramatic treatment of the First World War and its impact on…
A starry Faust at Covent Garden
We were going to be in London for the Easter weekend and I had seen the extraordinary cast (Netrebko, Calleja, Terfel, Keenlyside) which the Royal Opera House had announced for the revival of David McVicar’s Faust. So, though I do…
Britten’s Paul Bunyan staged by the ETO
Coming to Britten’s Paul Bunyan for the first time, I was unsure what to expect. A musical? An operetta? A juvenile opera score? What I saw and heard with English Touring Opera’s current production was certainly an agreeable surprise. The…
Cavalli’s Elena in Lille
Lucky Lille, to have the possibility of importing, for three performances, last year’s Aix Festival’s production of Cavalli’s Elena. In apparently its first revival since its creation in 1659, this piece demonstrated again Cavalli’s prowess as a lively reinterpreter of…
WNO’s production of Henze’s Boulevard Solitude
I had been waiting for over thirty years to find a performance of Henze’s Boulevard Solitude and when eventually it turned up, as part of Welsh National Opera’s current season of Fallen Women, I was not disappointed. Far from it….
Bellini’s Straniera in Essen
Bellini’s La Straniera (The Stranger) is indeed strange. Some important aspects of the plot and the motivations of the characters are difficult to understand and confusing. For his production at the Essen Opera, Christof Loy communicated in an interview published…
Cav and Pag at the Deutsche Oper Berlin
To add spice to a revival of David Pountney’s 2005 production of Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci, the Deutsche Oper Berlin invited two famous Wagnerians, Waltraud Meier and Stephen Gould, to have a few nights off the more serious stuff…
Shiva for Anna at the Berlin Festival for Contemporary Music
Shiva for Anna, given in Berlin as part of the March Festival for Contemporary Music, is a striking piece of musical theatre. The composer Mela Meierhans wanted to pay tribute to her long-standing collaborator, the English poet Anne Blonstein who…
Two Lohengrins at Coburg: Wagner & Sciarrino
The Landestheater Coburg had the bright idea of bringing together in a single weekend Wagner’s Lohengrin and Sciarrino’s modernistic monodrama on the same theme, an exploration of Elsa’s psychological state as she is denied consummation on the wedding night. The…
Brecht/Weill Mahagonny in Hof
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is undoubtedly a masterpiece of music theatre. Kurt Weill’s musical idiom and Berthold Brecht’s text capture so well the spirit of the Weimar Republic with its mixture of cynicism, pessimism and…
Verdi’s Macbeth in Leeds
Yes, we know that Verdi’s version of Macbeth is, simple, even simplistic, compared with the original. Yet with its directness, vigour and musical inventiveness, it carries a definite punch. The cast which Opera North had assembled for this revival had…
A Recital in York of Early Romantic Lieder
Lieder recitals appear to have become all the rage. Up in the North, we have Leeds Lieder, and other music organizations are getting in on the act. The RNCM has a Day of Song coming up, and yesterday it was…
Stravinsky and a New Piano Concerto with the Concertgebouw
You are in Amsterdam at a concert given by one of the world’s great orchestras. Its principal conductor, Mariss Jansons, has cancelled and has been replaced by a young Italian, Gustavo Gimeno, previously better known as the orchestra’s percussionist. The…
Lakmé at the Opéra Comique
Lakmé is one of those operas which are famous – everyone has heard of, if not actually heard, the “bell” aria” – but are rarely performed. So its appearance at the Paris Opéra Comique justified a visit. Now if you…
Rossini’s Pietra del Paragone at Paris Châtelet
I have always resisted the use of video and other projections in theatrical productions. Typically they are a distraction from the action on stage, or coordinate insufficiently with its physicality, or add too little to it. But the current presentation…
L’elisir d’amore at the RNCM
The RNCM have another future star on their hands. At their winter production of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, the Chinese tenor Kang Wang won the hearts of all. Not only does he have a golden voice and idiomatic Italianate phrasing; he also…
The Messiah in Harrogate
I refuse to hear the Messiah every year, because over-familiarity can spoil its impact. Also, during the Hallelujah Chorus I stubbornly remain seated because I find the tradition of standing to be silly. Nevertheless at the Harrogate Royal Hall performance,…
Jayson Gillham’s Recital at Ripon
Ripon Cathedral Concert Society has for a number of years provided some of the most exciting chamber music concerts in North Yorkshire. A year or so ago its future was, with declining audiences and diminishing resources, uncertain. However, a largely…
Donizetti’s Anna Bolegna staged by WNO
After all the television series and films on the Tudors, and with Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell books fresh in our memory, how should Donizetti’s operas on the same theme be staged? With plenty of pageant and historically appropriate costumes and…