Puccini “La Boheme”, Royal Opera House
Not just another revival of a venerable old staging but its 25th showing in the 50th year of director John Copley’s work at the Royal Opera House. They served up a cake and a vintage cast for…
Wagner “The Flying Dutchman”, English National Opera
The front curtain at the London Coliseum is a rare sight these days and suggested that we might for once be about to experience Wagner’s celebrated Overture without “illustration”. With Edward Gardner and the ENO Orchestra identifying…
Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim, Royal Festival Hall
The furtive opening bars of Mozart’s C minor Piano Concerto No. 24 were shrouded in a mellowness of tone that made them welcoming rather than darkly unsettling and as the well upholstered sound of the venerable Staatskapelle…
The International Conductors’ Academy of the Allianz Cultural Foundation, Royal Festival Hall
A showcase for three young conductors, a malfunction at the printers, and for the first time in my experience no programmes for the audience and the prospect of blind-tasting their talents. Now there’s a thought – no…
A Conversation With ELIN MANAHAN THOMAS
Elin Manahan Thomas‘ lovely voice has graced two of the finest specialist choirs in the world: John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir and Harry Christophers’ The Sixteen. It’s a voice born to embrace the pure and ornate lines…
Verdi “Rigoletto”, Royal Opera House
Distressed and decaying amidst crumbling masonry Michael Vale’s brutalist set tilts and turns towards catastrophe like some sort of post-modernist installation. The Court of Mantua is a world off its axis in David McVicar’s much-revived staging of…
St Petersburg Philharmonic, Vengerov, Temirkanov, Barbican Hall
When you are arguably the greatest violinist in the world a four-year “time out” from the public arena can seem like an eternity. But it’s a time for renewal, too, and though absence makes audiences’ hearts grow…
Judith Weir “Miss Fortune”, Royal Opera House
Miss Fortune in name and deed. Sad to say but Judith Weir’s sixth opera is an embarrassment. Sad because Weir’s folk inspired fables have won many friends, sad because she is a composerly composer whose luminous orchestral…
Mendelssohn “Elijah”, Britten Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia Voices, Delfs, Barbican Hall
The Victorians have a lot to answer for. Their appetite for the Old Testament blood and thunder of Mendelssohn’s Elijah knew no bounds – and they liked it big. Size mattered and that big-is-better, choir-of-thousands, communal approach…
A Conversation With ALFIE BOE
Alfie Boe – affectionately known as the nation’s favourite tenor – is the latest in a distinguished line of big voices to swagger into the role of Jean Valjean in Boublil and Schönberg’s epic musical Les Misérables.…