Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Ceri Williams

Wagner's Die Walküre was split into two concert performances over two days, the first on one evening and the second on an afternoon and an evening. This review is for both.

A spot picks out a man in the Bridgewater Hall’s front row, who steps up to stand by a table in front of the Hallé Orchestra, which is ready to begin. He puts on a braided coat to become Richard Wagner. Played by Roger Allam, his lines are taken from the master’s theoretical writings, letters to the likes of Franz Liszt and King Ludwig II of Bavaria and quotations from reported conversations. He is joined by two choruses, spectral women in white - the excellent Deborah Findlay and Sara Kestelman - who provide background and pass comment. We are watching The Madness of an Extraordinary Plan, written by Gerard McBurney and directed by Neil Bartlett as a contextualising prologue which draws wittily on sources from Bakunin to Dickens and from Nietzsche to Wagner’s first wife. It is a concept pioneered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with its Beyond The Score programme.