La finta giardiniera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
The title of the opera provides the essence of Frederic Wake-Walker’s staging. Finta – pretend, fake – and giardiniera – gardener – are key elements in a show where Arcadian bliss is not even glimpsed until the…
Carousel, Arcola Theatre
The first thing that strikes you about this joyously inventive postage stamp staging of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s masterpiece – and it strikes you so forcibly in this high-decibel digital age that it’s almost a pinch-yourself moment –…
London Symphony Orchestra, Luisi, Barbican Hall
It is not often we hear Bruckner’s colossal Eighth Symphony in its longer and far quirkier original version (1887 ed Nowak) and when we do hear it in either of its two incarnations it invariably stands alone.…
Don Giovanni, Glyndebourne
The darkness descends with the shocking first chord of the Overture brutally shutting out a beautiful day at Glyndebourne. Such comedy as there is in this show (and that aspect of the piece is kept well in…
Benvenuto Cellini, London Coliseum
Hector Berlioz and Terry Gilliam were undoubtedly made for each other – kindred spirits with wild imaginations, impractical demands, and a touch of anarchy. But Berlioz was a chaotic dramatist at best and in a piece like…
The Life of the Party, Menier Chocolate Factory
I still regard myself as an Andrew Lippa newbe – though now that his recent outing at the St James Theatre has morphed into fully-produced all-singing, all-dancing London show with props and projections and costumes and lights…
Dialogues des Carmélites, Royal Opera House
Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites is a special and very particular opera. There is nothing else quite like it. Just as the drama – set to the composer’s own libretto – teeters between fear and faith so too…
Miss Saigon, Prince Edward Theatre
The heat is on in Saigon – and 25 years after its world premiere Cameron Mackintosh has just turned up the thermostat. Boublil and Schönberg’s celebrated take on Puccini’s Madam Butterfly has always been my favourite of…
Der Rosenkavalier, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
You can count on Richard Jones for challenging our perceptions and turning expectation on its head but the image of the Marschallin rising Venus-like from her bath while showers of water rain down like gold dust on…
The Pajama Game, Shaftesbury Theatre
On the Richter scale of catchiness Richard Adler and Jerry Ross’ songs for The Pajama Game are right up there. Quite who did what in their brief but shining songwriting partnership was never entirely clear, though Adler…
