Articles by Laura Kate Wilson

Laura Kate Wilson
Laura has an MA in English from the University of St Andrews, and has worked as a features writer and a freelance reviewer. She is fascinated by all aspects of opera, but has a particular interest in the role of the baritone on the operatic stage and a passion for the works of Puccini.

Prom 3: Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts Pelléas et Mélisande

By Laura Kate Wilson, 18 July 2012
Opera at the 2012 Proms began with a performance of Debussy’s only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande. Conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the production celebrated the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, and marked the 24 years since Gardiner first brought the work to the Royal Albert Hall with the Opéra de Lyon.
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Prom 1: An English theme makes for a rousing start

By Laura Kate Wilson, 16 July 2012
The first night of the Proms was, in this year of Olympic celebrations and the Diamond Jubilee, a tribute to all things English, featuring an impressive range of singers and a (somewhat appropriate) relay team of stellar English conductors. The programme began with a strange mixture of old and new.
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Opera North stage the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic Carousel

By Laura Kate Wilson, 08 May 2012
Since their staging of Show Boat two decades ago, Opera North have frequently dipped into the world of the musical and the operetta, breathing new life into some of our favourite shows.
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Kathleen Ferrier Award Winner Kitty Whately in Leeds

By Laura Kate Wilson, 28 March 2012
On Sunday afternoon the most recent recipient of the prestigious Kathleen Ferrier Award, Kitty Whately, was welcomed to the Clothworkers’ Hall by Leeds Lieder, an organisation founded in the hope of introducing art song to a new audience.
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Opera North present a beautiful, powerful new production of Bellini's Norma

By Laura Kate Wilson, 30 January 2012
Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece Norma was once a staple of the operatic stage, performed by great sopranos such as Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland on a regular basis. Nowadays, despite containing one of the most famous arias of all time, it is performed less frequently.
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Opera North's Giulio Cesare is a sparkling success

By Laura Kate Wilson, 16 January 2012
The Roman emperor Julius Caesar’s entanglement with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra is one of the best-known love stories of all time, and the operatic re-telling by George Frideric Handel, with its incredible music and universal themes of war, passion and politics, is experiencing a resurgence.
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Leeds Festival Chorus and the English Chamber Orchestra perform Handel's Messiah

By Laura Kate Wilson, 13 December 2011
Since its first performance in 1742, Handel's Messiah has become one of the world's most popular and widely performed oratorios. With a biblical libretto which tells the story of Jesus from the Nativity to the Ascension, and stunning, joyous choral parts that lend themselves equally well to small and large choirs, the Messiah has become a festive must-hear.
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The Royal Opera House celebrate Placido Domingo's forty years of Covent Garden performances

By Laura Kate Wilson, 31 October 2011
In 1971, the thirty year-old Placido Domingo made his Covent Garden début as Cavaradossi in Puccini's Tosca and in the intervening forty years, he has given two hundred and thirty performances in more than twenty-five roles for Royal Opera House audiences.
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Bright is the Ring of Words opens Leeds Lieder+ with a celebration of music and words

By Laura Kate Wilson, 09 October 2011
Leeds Lieder+, the northern biennial festival of art song, began on Friday night with Bright is the Ring of Words. Advertised as a celebration of British verse, the evening featured settings of the words of Lord Byron, Robert Louis Stevenson and Shakespeare by a diverse range of composers including Mendelssohn, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Richard Strauss, Roger Quilter and John Dankworth.
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Opera North's revival of Ruddigore is a visual treat

By Laura Kate Wilson, 04 October 2011
Baritone Thomas Hampson recently quipped that he'd try anything other than Gilbert and Sullivan, echoing the sentiments of many opera fans who are inclined to see the operettas penned by the Victorian duo as the preserve of amateur dramatic societies and school drama clubs. With this in mind, it was somewhat surprising to see Opera North create a new production of Ruddigore back in 2010.
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Daniele Rustioni conducts Opera North's revival of Madama Butterfly

By Laura Kate Wilson, 26 September 2011
When Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly premiered at La Scala in 1904, it was heavily booed. Few who attended that disastrous first performance could have imagined that, more than one hundred years on, it would have evolved into one of the most enduringly popular and widely performed operas in the world.
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Heritage Opera present Jonathan Dove's new opera, Mansfield Park

By Laura Kate Wilson, 08 August 2011
It's extremely rare to see a small opera company commission a brand new work, but that's exactly what Heritage Opera, who regularly present chamber operas in the north-west of England, have done.
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Antonio Pappano and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia bring William Tell to the Proms

By Laura Kate Wilson, 19 July 2011
On Saturday night, Antonio Pappano and his Roman orchestra and chorus, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, brought us the first opera of the 2011 Proms- Gioachino Rossini's William Tell.
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An all-star cast create opera history in the Royal Opera House's Tosca

By Laura Kate Wilson, 19 July 2011
Ever since the Royal Opera House announced that two performances of its summer revival of Jonathan Kent's production of Tosca would feature an all-star cast, opera lovers all over the world have been desperately trying to get their hands on a golden ticket.
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The Royal College of Music International Opera School perform Così Fan Tutte

By Laura Kate Wilson, 04 July 2011
The Royal College of Music’s International Opera School has long been a training ground for some of the world’s most famous opera stars.
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The London Mozart Trio at Leeds International Jewish Performing Arts Festival

By Laura Kate Wilson, 30 June 2011
The London Mozart Trio have a concert schedule dominated by London venues, so their performance at the Leeds College of Music as part of the city's International Jewish Performing Arts Festival on Monday was a rare opportunity for those outside the capital to hear their beautiful music.
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The Cross in the Mountains: Choral Music in the Age of Wagner's Ring Cycle

By Laura Kate Wilson, 28 June 2011
To add insight and context to their performances of Das Rheingold, Opera North have been staging a number of events exploring Wagner, his music and the production of his operas. On Saturday evening their Howard Assembly Room played host to The Cross in the Mountains, an evening of German choral music composed in the age of the Ring Cycle.
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Dame Anne Evans: I Saw the World End

By Laura Kate Wilson, 14 June 2011
In the run up to their widely anticipated concert staging of Wagner's Das Rheingold this summer, Opera North are providing us with a number of events at their Howard Assembly Room which aim to explore different aspects of the Ring Cycle.
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Opera North search for 'the spark of God' in Janáček's From the House of the Dead

By Laura Kate Wilson, 09 May 2011
In a promotional video for Opera North's new production of From The House of the Dead, director John Fulljames gives us two seemingly opposing views on Leoš Janáček's final opera- that it is “the most intense opera of the twentieth century,” but also a piece in which “very little happens.
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Opera North's 'Fidelio'- A Focus on Freedom

By Laura Kate Wilson, 19 April 2011

The concept of freedom is at the heart of Opera North's current production of Fidelio. As soon as you open your programme, you are encouraged by the company's General Director Richard Mantle to consider Beethoven's only opera as having something to say about the struggle for liberty that has been taking place in the Middle East over the past few months.“Opera is perfectly placed to convey the personal experiences of individuals caught up in larger social or political events,” he writes, and it is easy to see why Fidelio, with its prison setting and eventual triumph of good over evil, lends itself particularly well to a comparison with contemporary global events.

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