John Johnston was a contributor to Bachtrack 2017-19. John was a true gentleman and lifelong opera "nut" who frequently travelled across Europe to catch performances, making regular pilgrimages to the Bayreuth Festival among others. His supreme knowledge and appreciation of voices meant he took to reviewing like the proverbial duck to water. We enjoyed his style and his insatiable appetite for catching rare operas and new productions wherever he could.
What brought real distinction and authenticity to the evening, as so often in this house, was the outstanding playing of the Staatskapelle conducted by Tomaš Netopil. From the start of the overture with its rapidly scurrying fugato for strings and pointed phrasing from the woodwind one felt the true sense of Smetana’s Czech inflected rhythms and harmonies
Rather than compiling a Top Ten of Baroque Hits, The Enchanted Island amounts to much more than a gallimaufry of choice gobbets, seasoned with French galenterie.
Olena Tokar's assured coloratura made an immediate success of the waltz with her convincingly adolescent appearance, rhythmic verve and stylish phrasing.
Camilla Nylund’s rich, ample voice bloomed in the glorious setting of the sonnet, cosseted by burnished horn playing, in Strauss' unsurpassed operatic farewell to the soprano voice.
In a score that can be a Technicolor wallow, Jurowski’s sure sense of dramatic pulse and balance, encompassed the brash dance rhythms, religious grandeur, vivid tone painting and the extremes of dissonance.
With its vertiginous vocal leaps and broad intervals, Komsi's pure pitch-perfect soprano soared like the eldrich keening of a sea bird. The spareness and incantatory intensity were heightened by the BBCSO and Oramo.
Cast and choir snaked and kicked their legs through the aisles of the hall – picking up audience members along the way – leading to a riotous on-stage dance.
Guildhall School of Music and Drama tackles Gian Carlo Menotti's rarity, a tale of stateless and paperless 'citizens of nowhere' seeking refuge amid Kafkaesque bureaucracy.
At its local Antwerp première, David Bösch’s new production of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane makes it the only house ever to have mounted twice.
