It is a myth that pearls can be formed from grit and so it proved here, where a vastly underwhelming musical performance sullied a much improved production of Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers.
Trotz Richard Strauss' weniger Verbindungen zu Leipzig bot das Gewandhausorchester unter Riccardo Chailly ein lebhaftes Tribut an den Komponisten anlässlich seines 150. Geburtstages, von einem gefühlvollen Don Quixote bis zu einem gewitzten - und irrsinnig schnellen - Till Eulenspiegel.
Unlike its première, disaster is averted in Opera Holland Park's Il barbiere di Siviglia, where a solidly traditional production is lit up by some splendid vocal performances.
“He’s not an opera director. He’s a very naughty boy!” Three years after his surreal Damnation of Faust, Terry Gilliam tackles more Berlioz for English National Opera in the shape of Benvenuto Cellini, striking gold again.
A silver sequined gown and sparkling virtuosity dazzled a good proportion of the audience in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in a recital by Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili. However, can virtuosity for its own sake be too much of a good thing?
Bringing Peter Grimes to Grange Park a year after the Britten centenary is an enormous challenge. With ‘Grimes on the Beach’ still fresh in the memory, the task of recreating the Suffolk coast in Hampshire’s idyllic countryside might have seemed a step too far.
Opium-induced hallucinations, French period bassoons as ripe as Camembert and a rare appearance by a serpent illuminated a thrilling Symphonie fantastique at Cadogan Hall.
Hans von Bülow taunted that Verdi’s Requiem was just another of his operas “in ecclesiastical garb’”. It’s difficult to disagree when dispatched with as much operatic fervour as Antonio Pappano mustered here.
Whooping horns, a single yellow rose and a velvety cushion of strings set the scene for a sumptuous tranche of highlights from Der Rosenkavalier in the London Symphony Orchestra’s latest concert commemorating Richard Strauss in his 150th anniversary year.
It’s that time of the year when orchestras are unveiling their wares to tempt us back into the concert hall after the summer break. What do you look for in new season brochures?
A ruthless Russian leader quelling revolt and uniting his country through waging war on its neighbours: the theme of Sergei Eisenstein’s film Ivan the Terrible, intended as a Soviet propagandist parable, raises a knowing eyebrow even today. Excerpts from Prokofiev’s score formed the bulk of this raucously enjoyable concert by the Philharmonia under Vladimir Ashkenazy, beneath a screening of key scenes from the film itself.
As a postscript to Opera Month, we look at how companies are expanding their forays into HD and are using of technology to showcase their wares into cinemas and our homes.
Die Fledermaus is as quintessentially Viennese as zithers and Schnitzel. In John Wilson, the Philharmonia and a fine ensemble cast, we should have had all the ingredients for a memorable matinée performance, but a few elements meant the fizz went rather flat.
Sinuous and seductive, wily and beguiling, Scheherazade can prove a handful for many conductors. Do you try to tame her capricious moods or succumb to her will? Kirill Karabits allowed Clio Gould and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to relate the tale at their own pace.
Kirill Karabits’ imaginative programme revealed CPE Bach as a difficult composer to place, with a symphony bearing all the hallmarks of a young Mozart and an ode with pre-echoes of Haydn’s The Creation, counterbalanced by the UK première of his 1784 St John Passion where, in the chorales at least, CPE demonstrated that he was a chip off the old block.
Verdi’s Otello opens with a fierce storm raging over Cyprus. In Rossini’s version, composed 71 years earlier in 1816, the composer eschewed the Cypriot setting entirely and the storm doesn’t take place until Act III, although last night a mighty crack of thunder resounded over the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées as the audience filed into the opera house.
There’s a touch of Borodin bus syndrome around at the moment; you wait years for a production of Prince Igor, then two come along in succession. The first was from the Metropolitan Opera, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, swiftly followed by the Novaya Opera which brings its production from Moscow to London as part of the UK—Russia Year of Culture.
