As a highlight of this year's London Handel Festival, the composer's rarely heard oratorio Deborah was given a strong and committed performance by Laurence Cummings and a fine cast.
The sensational countertenor Franco Fagioli led an all-male cast in an extravagant staging of Vinci's Artaserse, a neglected Baroque opera, at the Royal Opera House at Versailles.
As part of Spitalfields Winter Festival, Lawrence Zazzo and La Nuova Musica presented a beautifully curated programme of operatic gems by Handel and his lesser-known contemporaries Bononcini and Ariosti.
Starring celebrated heldentenor Klaus Florian Vogt, Kasper Holten's highly-praised production of Korngold's Die tote Stadt for Finnish National Opera is brilliantly revived.
Opera Lyrica is a new addition to the thriving small opera company scene in the UK. Founded in 2012 by artistic director Paola Cuffolo and producer Nick Simpson, it gives aspiring professionals valuable opportunities.
Music associated with the eighteenth-century Dresden court was the theme of Thursday's excellent concert by the European Union Baroque orchestra under the leadership of the violinist Gottfried von der Goltz.
Billed as a “concert hall staging”, the Academy of Ancient Music’s season-opening performance of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo was brilliantly staged at the Barbican by the director Orpha Phelan and designer Caroline Hughes – as close as one could get to a full production in a concert hall without a pit.
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra made a welcome return to the Proms after two years’ absence (their last appearance was in the late night Prom in 2010), led by their youthful principal conductor Robin Ticciati, who has already been in the post for four years. They brought a programme showcasing the early 19th-century repertoire which Ticciati has recently been exploring with this orchestra.
Friday’s two Proms had a theme running through them: Resurrection, Easter and Ascension. I wasn’t quite sure how I would feel about listening to Bach’s small-scale oratorios after Mahler’s mighty “Resurrection” Symphony, but I needn’t have worried. Compared to Mahler’s angst and doubt in the symphony, Bach’s unwavering Christian faith was reassuring.
After all that tonal instability in last week’s Wagner marathon at the Proms, Daniel Harding and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra’s programme celebrating C major came as a breath of fresh air. The Royal Albert Hall had cooled down a bit too.
On Monday lunchtime, the rising Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang and the Tashkent-born pianist Michail Lifits launched this year’s Proms Chamber Music series in the relatively intimate space of Cadogan Hall.
Nabucco in a shopping mall – this is Graham Vick’s concept for his new production of Verdi’s early masterpiece created specifically for New National Theatre Tokyo.
After Friday’s sublime performance of Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato at the opening concert of 2013 Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, I am puzzled why this ravishing masterpiece doesn’t enjoy wider popularity (although it was performed recently at the London Handel Festival).
British director Richard Jones is well known for his bold, modern and often controversial takes on operatic repertoire. So I was very curious to see what surprising ideas he would come up with in directing Britten’s rarely performed opera Gloriana, originally composed in honour of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.
Imeneo (1740), Handel’s penultimate opera, is atypical on several fronts. It’s relatively short by Handel’s standards (three acts, under two hours of music); the plot is thin, but not as absurd or complicated as those of some of his other operas (there are no disguises, for example); the title role is composed for a bass; and the opera has a chorus which participates in the plot, rather than just
Handel’s Radamisto has an improbable plot (although average by Baroque opera standards) which can make it difficult to stage. The most recent staging in London was the ENO production in 2010, which had a largely abstract setting.
