One of the great advantages of leaving your cabaret debut until you are on the cusp of becoming an octogenarian is that you and you alone alone make the rules. Better yet you owe no one an apology, least of all your audience. The embraceable Anne Reid positively bounced on for her set at the … [Read More]
Posted in Asides on May 23rd, 2013
The Major-Domo promises fireworks during the Prologue of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Katharina Thoma, the director of Glyndebourne’s new staging, drops a bombshell – actually several bombshells. Glyndebourne’s wartime history – as a refuge for evacuees – would seem to have chimed with the darker implications of the opera within – namely … [Read More]
Posted in Opera, Reviews on May 19th, 2013
There are those who would argue that Liza (Minnelli, that is) has become so much of a self-parody that the best of her impersonators are actually more convincing than she is. That’s the cynical view, of course, but it is something that crossed my mind on more than a few occasions during Trevor Ashley’s barnstorming … [Read More]
Posted in Musical Theatre, Reviews on May 16th, 2013
If you should take your seats prematurely in the London Coliseum you’ll find yourself confronted with a group of serving British soldiers. You’ll shift a little uneasily under their gaze. There they are, staring, smoking, loitering; there we are, on a visit to the opera. There’s a disconnect. Among those soldiers is Wozzeck (Leigh Melrose), … [Read More]
Posted in Opera, Reviews on May 12th, 2013
You can take the girl out of Brisbane… Alison Jiear is a riot – a whole lot of woman with a blinder of a voice and the kind of familiarity that they breed in Oz. She and her audience know just how far they can take each other. At one point in her “Under the … [Read More]
Posted in Asides on May 11th, 2013
Lucy Schaufer has always been one to confound our expectations. As she puts it herself, she’s “an American in London, conceived within the American Dream and living in the Old World.” As an indication of her boundless versatility she’s been seen here in roles as diverse as Claire DeLoone in Bernstein’s On the Town, … [Read More]
Posted in Podcasts on May 1st, 2013
Like all the great music theatre pieces you only really see and feel their greatness when the acting is honest, true, and sure. In the case of Puccini’s La Boheme youth is a factor, too, and when that youth is largely home-grown there is double the cause for celebration. Jonathan Miller’s Brassai-inspired staging casts a … [Read More]
Posted in Asides on April 30th, 2013
Vladimir Jurowski deemed this the most challenging of any programme in the South Bank’s year long The Rest is Noise festival and proceeded to tell us precisely why. That his little preamble lasted almost twice as long as the first piece – Webern’s Variations for Orchestra Op.30 – was an indicator of just how scientific … [Read More]
Posted in Classical Music, Reviews on April 28th, 2013
Liadov crafted more than his fair share of curtain-raisers – but to what end? One might imagine The Enchanted Lake – an atmospheric and beautifully scored miniature – as the prelude to an opera or full-length ballet; there would be method and consequence in that. But as a piece in its own right its six … [Read More]
Posted in Classical Music, Reviews on April 24th, 2013
It was clear that there was an Italian on the podium. While muted strings invoked an atmosphere so crepuscular that that one involuntarily closed one’s eyes the murmur of voices intoning the words “Requiem aeternam” seemed to come from deep inside the cathedral. The theatricality of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem is inescapable but what was … [Read More]
Posted in Classical Music, Reviews on April 21st, 2013