A sinister Bluebeard's Castle from the NYOGB

By Peter Connors, 06 January 2018

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“utterly thrilling”

Reviewed at The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester on 5 January 2018

Lyadov, The Enchanted Lake, Op.62

Dukas, The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Bartók, Duke Bluebeard's Castle

Sir Mark Elder, Conductor

Rinat Shaham, Judith

Robert Hayward, Bluebeard

National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain

Chasing the American Dream: UK premiere for Missy Mazzoli’s Proving Up

Mark Pullinger, 1st June

Amy Lane directs an intimate staging of Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s 2018 chamber opera in the compact Milton Court Theatre.

****1

Longborough Festival Opera season starts slow with Orlando

Eleanor Knight, 30th May

Beth Taylor gives the lows and highs of Handel's heroics an almighty, whole-body shakedown in Sinéad O'Neill’s new staging of Handel's Orlando.

***11

Viennese splendour in Garsington’s Rosenkavalier revival

Roy Westbrook, 28th May

Bruno Ravella's splendid 2021 production of Strauss' opera of Viennese manners returns with a fine cast.

****1

Bang! Mozart’s volcano erupts in Opera Holland Park’s Così fan tutte

Peter Quantrill, 28th May

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****1

A witty hotel Don Giovanni opens Blackwater Valley Festival

Andrew Larkin, 27th May

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****1

Garsington’s new La traviata ticks every musical and dramatic box

David Karlin, 27th May

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*****

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Peter Connors

Peter has been attending concerts and operas enthusiastically since his parents took him to see The Mikado in Liverpool when he was a boy of ten and to a “family concert” given by the RLPO a year or so later. Peter studied Modern Languages at Worcester College, Oxford and Law in Manchester. After spending twenty years as a pensions lawyer in Manchester, he retrained as a teacher of English as a foreign language, which took him to Germany and to Serbia. With the onset of the pandemic he returned to the UK and now works online and frequents concert halls and theatres in the North West of England.