Seven out ten for Opera North’s new production of La Traviata. Alessandro Talevi is a skilled director and when he concentrated on the drama between the main characters his staging was very effective. But the video showing tuberculosis and other…
When a production of a popular opera has been in the company repertory for a number of years, and has had several revivals designed to show off the talents of major international artists, it tends to lose its originality, and…
It is always a pleasure to return to La Fenice, for me the most beautiful opera house in the world. The one-act early opera by Rossini, L’inganno felice, was a welcome departure from the conventional repertory. Although subtitled “farsa per…
Tim Benjamin is obviously a talented composer. In 1998 I admired his one-act opera The Bridge, composed when he was only 22. And now we have Madame X, performed in Halifax on its way to the festival of new opera…
My experience with lieder recitals which, though devoted to a single theme, jump around between languages, styles and composers has not always a been happy. The programme “Behind the Lines 1914-2014” given by Anna Prohaska and Eric Schneider at Edinburgh’s …
Catching Owen Wingrave at the Edinburgh Festival meant that I had now seen all of Britten’s operas. Superbly conducted by Mark Wigglesorth and in an austere but strong production by Neil Bartlett, it was certainly performed with conviction. The singers…
The visit of the Freiburg Theater to Norwich for a Wagner Fest was a welcome addition to the British summer operatic scene. Given the large number of empty seats at the Monday showing of Tannhäuser, it could not have been…
Is Dvorak’s The Jacobin a playful folk opera, or a serious piece about the abuse of power? Probably, both of these and getting the balance right between them cannot be easy. Stephen Unwin with the Buxton Festival Opera made a…
You are in a charming late 18th century theatre in Barga, an attractive hill town of Northern Tuscany. You have thoroughly enjoyed the first two acts of Il Bajazet by Francesco Gasparini, being given its first performance in modern times….
Can the quality of the orchestral playing can make a difference in the opera house? The question was put to the test during my recent trip to Germany and the Netherlands. At two of my stops world famous orchestras were…
At last! An opera production in Germany that is visually spectacular and pleasing and dramatically coherent and compelling; although the director responsible for the current version in Leipzig of Die Frau ohne Schatten, Balazs Kovalik, is admittedly Hungarian. He was…
It is gratifying that a number of German opera houses are keen to explore the works of Jewish composers that were banned by the Nazis. Schreker and Korngold being two prominent examples. I confess that the name of Bernhard Sekles…
Be wary of any performance in a German theatre publicised as “nach” an author or composer. To be best translated as “based on”, this normally implies that the performers have taken great liberties with the original work. Now the Mannheim…
The Frankfurt Opera is one of my favourite venues and I have attended there many impressive performances, but I had not originally intended to see their revival of A Village Romeo and Juliet. Rather my plan was to see Cavalli’s…
Under the artistic direction of David Nixon, the Northern Ballet have established a reputation for narrative ballet and understandably have had a great success with dance versions of such familiar tales as Cinderella, Dracula and the Three Musketeers. But once,…
Why, I ask myself, did the Opera North semi-staged performance of Götterdämmerung in the Leeds Town Hall make such an impact? To begin with, we in the audience were much closer to the singers than in a conventional theatre. More…
The annual round of summer music festivals is upon us. What are our expectations of them? Some would seem to flourish on combining concerts with talks, walks and pleasurable social activities. Some attempt to bring quality music to geographical areas…
For lovers of Haydn like myself the annual festival at Bridgnorth in Shropshire would seem to be a must. Performances in an attractive town of a range of his works, revealing what a brilliant composer he was, innovative, inventive and…
It is not difficult to explain why Alan Bennett has achieved such popularity with his autobiographical writings. The very ordinariness of his humble background and the tensions that created within him as he explored the larger world of culture and…
We all love Under Milk Wood. Why? Most obviously because of the language, the imagery, its colour and resonance; and the eccentric characters and their Welshness. But there is also here a love of life and its confrontation with death….