Monthly Archives: June 2011

Puccini “Madama Butterfly”, Royal Opera House

One can only hope that the ill wind which strips away the cherry blossom at the close of Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser’s feeble 2003 production of Madama Butterfly might soon carry off the entire staging. I’ve seen some cheesy operatic moments over the years but the sight of poor Butterfly in her death throes … [Read More]

Posted on 30/06/2011
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Muhly/Lucas “Two Boys”, English National Opera

The most surprising thing about Two Boys is the consonance and quiet sensuality of the score. Many words spring to mind: elegiac, mournful, poetic, melismatic – a digital age score without digitalisms, without electronics, actual or simulated, without amplification. And it’s clear, so clear – but never clinical – in word and gesture and thought: … [Read More]

Posted on 25/06/2011
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Britten “Peter Grimes”, Royal Opera House

Willy Decker’s 1994 production of Britten’s Peter Grimes has not worn well and pales now in the shadow of David Alden award-winning staging down the road at English National Opera. That, too, is due for revival. Decker’s problem – more pronounced in Francois de Carpentries’ revival – is that the highly stylised and fussily choreographed … [Read More]

Posted on 22/06/2011
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London Symphony Orchestra, Pires, Haitink, Barbican Hall

Her appearances in this country are rare enough as it is so to discover that Maria Joao Pires was to be a late substitute (for the indisposed Murray Perahia) was precious consolation indeed. She played Mozart’s last and in some ways sparest Piano Concerto – No.27 in B-flat minor – with the kind of profound … [Read More]

Posted on 15/06/2011
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Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim, Boulez, Royal Festival Hall

Liszt and Wagner, Boulez and Barenboim – iconic names, analogous kinships. As conductors and musical soulmates both Boulez and Barenboim have boldly sought and found satisfying answers to the Wagner myth but who, one wonders, could have made the lowering tuba at the start of Wagner’s Faust Overture sound quite so mystifying or indeed so … [Read More]

Posted on 14/06/2011
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Mascagni “L’amico Fritz”, Opera Holland Park

It’s all a little unlikely: Protestants and Jews in rural Alsace, Yiddish melodies given a distinctly Italianate spin, the longest and most infuriating foreplay in opera, and not one single death. I’m not sure when there was last a Jewish wedding in Holland Park and I wish they’d had better weather for this one – … [Read More]

Posted on 11/06/2011
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Verdi “Simon Boccanegra”, English National Opera

It doesn’t take long to establish that there is an extraordinary director at work here. The body language, the tangible involvement of every character on stage, the way in which emotional journeys are charted and feelings expressed not just in song but in the involuntary sounds that people make when they communicate joy, anger, hatred. … [Read More]

Posted on 09/06/2011
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Bernstein “Candide”, London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Kristjan Jarvi, Barbican Hall

Leonard Bernstein’s most bountiful score – a mouth-watering confection of sugar and spice and all things nice – is also a masterpiece of parody and counter-parody. Voltaire’s Candide was short and pithy; Bernstein and his legion of collaborators (this was a Broadway breech-birth if ever there was one) went for long and elaborate and terminally … [Read More]

Posted on 06/06/2011
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Mozart “The Magic Flute”, Garsington Opera at Wormsley

The sun really smiled on the opening of Garsington Opera’s handsome new summer pavilion at the Getty’s Wormsley estate – but in doing so it rather turned Mozart’s Magic Flute on its head flooding light and enlightenment somewhat prematurely over the Queen of the Night’s dominions. The new dawn arrived here with the rising of … [Read More]

Posted on 03/06/2011
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Julian Lloyd Webber in discussion with Edward Seckerson

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on 02/06/2011
Posted in Podcasts