Opera Holland Park starts its 2018 season with a bang (and a cough), offering a splendid new production of La traviata. Lauren Fagan is a sensational Violetta, but the production is a real company effort and achievement.
A convincing outing for Leoncavallo's rarely performed tale of adultery, populated by characters who are flesh and blood and are immediately recognisable today.
Problems of orchestral balance cloud Olivia Fuchs's straightforward, compelling staging of Janáček’s tirade against the rigidity and hypocrisy of small town society.
A tight production from Martin Lloyd-Evans together with a strong cast and loving treatment from conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren made a strong case for more regular performances of this neglected gem.
Happy Birthday, Mozart! An incisive Gran Partita from London Winds, a spirited Sesto from Christine Rice, and a memorable and arresting Concerto from Collins and the City of London Sinfonia.
In Opera Holland Park's latest foray into obscure verismo, an excellent orchestral performance and high quality singing fails to translate into a compelling drama.
Third time unlucky? After a scorching start to the summer, with superb productions of Il trittico and Flight, Opera Holland Park’s season came unstuck with a horror of a show in Daniel Slater’s Aida.
Flight represents a brave new departure for Opera Holland Park, the first contemporary opera to take to its main stage, in a striking staging with top quality musical performances.
Martin Lloyd-Evan's highly sensitive production features a show-stealing performance by Richard Burkhard but is marred by problems of orchestral balance.
An excellent orchestral performance and fine singing from Yvonne Howard and Heather Shipp make Opera Holland Park's Norma well worth seeing, in spite of imperfections.
Britten's score achieves his usual kaleidoscope of different colours, played marvellously by the City of London Sinfonia under Steuart Bedford. Annilese Miskimmon's production yields an intense dose of psycho-dramatic tension.
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.
Stephen Barlow’s staging of Puccini's Western is easy on the eye, if short on verismo. Susannah Glanville impresses as the barkeeper with a heart of gold.
Michael Collins' golden tone delights in Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in a concert featuring the world première of Gwilym Simcock's latest composition, On a Piece of Tapestry.
Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival is continuing this season with programming focusing on the second half of the 20th century. Tonight’s music was a part of the festival’s Britten centenary celebrations, adding in works by Copland and Shostakovich.
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari is a bit of a strange fish: a recluse, a self-described mystic, and proud enough of his hybrid German-Italian identity that he appended his mother’s maiden name to his own at the age of nineteen.
There was an element of scenic continuity between the lush greenery and positively balmy Holland Park evening surrounding us, and the staging of Opera Holland Park’s production of L’elisir d’amore: in the background, a large greenhouse full of the brightest sunflowers; in the foreground, sunflowers dotted about the stage, and the back ends of two lorries plastered with a large image of a fie
Bizet’s name, ever since the early (though by no means instant) success of his last opera and major bestseller Carmen, has become synonymous with the idea of catchy tunes and exotic soundworlds. That’s the composer who is with us most of the time.
Living in the city is alternately an experience of exhilarating interconnectedness and one of unbearable loneliness. On the good days, you share a sympathetic smile with your fellow commuters on a packed Tube train, you trade easy banter with the cashier at the Sainsbury’s checkout, and you feed off the buzz of the crowd as you head out for a night in Shoreditch.
Before last night I had reserved judgement on John Adams’ Grand Pianola Music (1982), which I knew from CD but hadn’t previously heard live. It was an effect-piece, I thought, so while it had left me a little cold in recorded form, I was open to the possibility that this enormous, ecstatic major-key pile-up would blow me away in the concert hall.
With Verdi's centenary coming up, his last opera Falstaff has had more attention than usual, with this production at Opera Holland Park following hot on the heels of Robert Carsen's new production at Covent Garden.
Il Trionfo di Clelia is one of almost 50 operas composed by Gluck, many of which are unknown to the average opera-goer. What makes it interesting, in terms of the history of opera, is that it marks a return to opera seria only months after the first performance of his celebrated Orfeo ed Euridice, widely regarded as the cornerstone of 'reform opera', to which simplicity of plot and music were key.
After their Mascagni debut last year, with L’amico Fritz (the composer’s first post-Cavalleria opera), Opera Holland Park have set out to uncover more music from the so-called ‘one-hit-wonder’ – still known to most for his smash verismo opera alone.
Howling, gusting wind. Damp, bitter cold. Dark, gathering twilight. Exactly the right atmosphere, you must agree, for Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, based on Sir Walter Scott's romantic historical novel of dark deeds in the grim castles of the Scottish clans, which opened Opera Holland Park's new season.
Pour la dernière soirée du Spitalfields Music Summer Festival, programme Haydn/J.C. Bach/Mozart/Haendel à Shoreditch Church, par le City of London Sinfonia et le chœur Polyphony dirigés par Stephen Layton : une clôture de festival réussie.
