Werk: Gloriana

When done as well as this, a "concert staging" is not oxymoronic, but a precise term for a valuable mode of presentation.

Ivor Bolton and David McVicar have teamed up to create an unapologetically Brittenian Gloriana, with Anna Caterina Antonacci at the top of a great cast

Of the various themes that make up Britten’s Gloriana, written to celebrate the coronation in 1953 and being given a rare outing at Covent Garden to mark the work’s 60th anniversary and Britten’s 100th, the most effective by far is a sort of operatic expansion of Shakespeare’s line “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”.