Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | Alresford

The Armenian soprano makes her Grange Festival debut – a casting coup that proves the single most compelling reason to see Max Webster’s new production.

Despite excellent vocal performances, David Alden’s production of Giulio Cesare in Egitto aims at irreverence but overplays the comedy.

A fine singing cast gives creditable performances in Johann Stauss II's most famous operetta, but Paul Curran's updating of Act 2 to 1930s Berlin takes the fizz out of the Champagne.

Singing performances are excellent, the staging is well crafted and Stravinsky's eclectic score entertains from start to finish. But it's an evening's opera that doesn't touch the soul.

Terrific music making with a light directorial touch brings mixed results to Monteverdi's 1643 masterpiece. 

In a setting that might be The Grange itself, a production which steadily tightens its grip until a blistering finish.

Some exceptional singing intermittently enlivens Daniel Slater's production which, dramatically and emotionally, takes time to ignite.   

Murder in the library? No, this isn't a re-run of Poirot, but a new production of Verdi's Macbeth to open The Grange Festival's 2022 season.

Britten's four lovers were costumed in quasi-contemporary, even glamorous manner, stripping to their underwear for the end of Act 2... so more Love Island than Ancient Athens.

In a new production at The Grange Festival, Elin Pritchard's performance of Puccini's titular heroine in this 1940s-era update is a tour de force.

Michael Chance takes the audience around The Grange in a thoughtful show combining opera excerpts, dance, acrobats, vocal and instrumental music.

The second Dance@TheGrange builds on its reputation for fearless programming, with performances from Company Wayne McGregor and Ballet Black, and a standout new work by Ballet Black's Mthuthuzeli November

Comic opera can fall flat, but if The Grange Festival's new production of Verdi's final masterpiece is a total delight, with a strong concept and a strong cast. This is country-house opera at its best.

Lloyd-Evans' new production of Mozart's classic might be traditional, but there's no lack of astuteness in his direction of his characters. Problems in the pit hinder an otherwise strong musical performance.

Directing Entführung at the grand old age of 85, John Copley gives us plenty of fun in the Pasha's palace. 

From the stately front of The Grange, an impressive moustache looms large, welcoming the audience to a production of Rossini's masterpiece that baffles, confuses and delights the audience.

A resounding success at its 1709 première, Handel’s Agrippina gripped the ear and dazzled the eye at the Grange Festival in a hugely entertaining and powerful performance.

A newly-orchestrated version of Jonathan Dove’s chamber opera drew some impressive performances from Heritage Opera in this pared-down adaption of Jane Austen’s third novel.

With a combined age of 161 years, John Copley and Steuart Bedford certainly bring ample experience to Grange Festival's new production of Britten's Albert Herring. 

Sex and violence bubbles beneath the surface in this near-faultless staging of Carmen. 

Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria tells one of the world’s great stories. This production is a treat for early opera fans and a great introduction for those new to the genre.

Strong vocal and orchestral performances and a tour-de-force staging of Act II light up Grange Park's production of Verdi's political thriller of the dark days of the Spanish inquisition.

Using Stephen Medcalf’s 2008 staging, this opening night of love and loneliness was a feast for the eyes, a musical triumph and a dramatic tour-de-force that tugged at the heart strings.

Stephen Medcalf's meticulous staging of Tchaikovsky's bitter masterpiece is lit up by Jung Soo Yun's Lensky, giving a direct injection of emotions: verismo before its time.

Grange Park’s Samson et Dalila doesn’t hit the bull’s eye, but it’s well worth the visit for a decent all-round staging of an unfamiliar work, an excellent rendering of its sumptuous score and for a thrilling piece of singing by Carl Tanner.

 Despite a stellar Mimì, a disappointing La bohème at Grange Park Opera.

Stylish, intelligent and visceral, with a magnetic central performance by Claire Rutter, Grange Park give us a powerful, tough La traviata updated to 1950s Hollywood.

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. 

When you think chic, black-tie country house opera, you probably don’t also think sixteen barefoot nuns being executed. Grange Park Opera’s fusion of these two contrasting ideas, however, has a lot going for it: their production of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites combines its minimal but effective staging with some impressive singing.

With programming in the major opera houses dominated by Verdi and Wagner, bel canto fans have had a slightly thin time of it this year (Covent Garden’s La donna del lago is an exception). But others are filling some of the gaps, with Rossini’s Maometto II coming up at Garsington and Stephen Langridge’s production of Bellini’s I Puritani, which opened at Grange Park last night.

The scene in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin where the peasants, weary from gathering in the harvest, sing and dance for the woman who owns the estate (and, for that matter, owns them) is perhaps not the best example of gritty social realism in opera.

If your favourite part of opera is a soaring melody which stays in your head long after the opera is over, they don’t come much better than Un bel dì in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, in which our enraptured heroine sings of the day that her husband’s ship will reappear on the horizon. At Grange Park last night, Claire Rutter did it full justice.

History has cast a complex light on Wagner’s music and on Wagner the man. But Tristan & Isolde (Wagner’s enormous vision of erotic love) is an opera that can still resonate today. Nietzsche referred to its “dangerous fascinations”, “spine-tingling and blissful infinity“ and “voluptuousness”. This was Grange Park Opera’s first foray into Wagnerian opera.

The eponymous heroine of Dvořák’s Rusalka is a water-sprite from the woods and lakes of Middle European fairy-tale, very much the territory familiar to ballet lovers in Giselle and Swan Lake.

Back in the 1950s and 60s, Vincenzo Bellini's Norma was one of the standards of the repertoire, putting in regular appearances at the world's top opera houses. It was a staple role for Maria Callas, who performed the opera 89 times.