Bruno Ravella's fast-paced Falstaff for Garsington still has crucial space for pathos amid the comedy, with a notably subtle central performance from Henry Waddington.
Despite the entertainment value and striking imagery, Kramer's production is a surprisingly dull affair, with curiously little chemistry between the lead couple.
Alex Otterburn as East End Eddy gives a towering performance in Scottish Opera’s revival of its Edinburgh Festival production of Mark Anthony Turnage’s Greek.
Qu’on adhère ou non au propos de Katie Mitchell, on ne sort pas indemne de ce spectacle qui donne à entendre des pages sublimes, mais sort délibérément le spectateur de sa zone de confort.
Affecting Britten, distinctive Elias and popular Elgar, with a curio of arranged Purcell thrown in, from Ryan Wigglesworth and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
Tom Cairns' production feels empty and distracted, but Kristina Mkhitaryan was a sensational Violetta, strongly reinforced by an impressive Germont from Igor Golovatenko.
La Cenerentola is the final component of Opera North's fairytale season, with every voice and every character getting a chance to revel in Rossini's intricate ornamentation.
“Honour your masters!” Sachs instructs Walther in the final scene. Wagner's spirit was honoured well as Glyndebourne's festival opened, but did the song contest necessarily crown the right winner?
A trip down memory lane sends our man in Aix into raptures as Robert Carsen's production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream comes home to Provence.
Francesca Zambello's huge, ambitious production returns once again to the Royal Albert Hall, with lavish costumes, excellent choreography and riotous crowd scenes which will charm children in particular.
The impressively well-drilled children’s chorus dominates this glittering production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the second component of Opera North’s Festival of Britten. 20 young performers in white, black wings on their fairy shoulders, wind solemnly in and out of the action, assemble in rows, perform versions of callisthenics exercises, and sing beautifully.
In spite of the fact that a Handel oratorio, however renowned, provides limited opportunities for staging, this production of Joshua, directed by Charles Edwards, is a largely successful exercise in the art of the possible.
This new production of Mozart’s final, and often overlooked, opera from John Fulljames and Opera North is neither a period piece nor a straightforward translation into our own time. Instead, it inhabits it own dark and austere world created by set designer Conor Murphy and Finn Ross, whose stylish abstract projections incorporate elements of government buildings both ancient and modern.
Few operas begin as arrestingly as Verdi’s Otello; no overture here – or, indeed, the first act of Shakespeare’s play. Instead, in a single galvanising orchestral outburst a terrific storm is set in motion, underpinned by the most gratingly dissonant of pedals in the lowest reaches of the organ.
For a Parisian, the accordion is the musical instrument most redolent of memories and dreams. So for Bohuslav Martinů's surrealist opera Julietta, written in Paris and infused with a discombobulating jumble of memories and dreams, Antony McDonald's sets were masterpieces: in each of three acts, the stage is dominated by a giant accordion which is more or less the size of the whole stage.
For a taut drama about the relationships between men thrown together in an enclosed space, it's hard to imagine a better setting than the claustrophobic environment of a warship in Nelson's navy.
For many people, to repeat a commonplace, opera is about those "wow" moments, the times when music, voice and staging come together to lift you onto a different plane. In ENO's Tosca last night, a "wow" moment happened more or less whenever Gwyn Hughes Jones opened his mouth: his Cavaradossi had total heroism, total artistry and effortless, silk-smooth phrasing.
Rameau's Castor et Pollux, his take on the Greek myth of two brothers so close that Pollux is prepared to descend into hell in the place of Castor, isn't exactly one of the standards of the repertoire.
