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.…
Dvorak “Rusalka”, Royal Opera House
It’s on occasions like this that the star-rating system runs into irreconcilable difficulties. I honestly cannot remember a time when musical and theatrical values were in such total divergence. The Royal Opera’s long-overdue first staging of Dvorak’s…
Adams “The Death of Klinghoffer”, English National Opera
The defining moment in John Adams’ opera – and Tom Morris’ staging of it – comes right at the top of a long and not unproblematic evening. And it’s a moment that should give pause for even…
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Elder, Royal Festival Hall
Such is Berlioz’ persuasive theatricality that even when he is rearranging Shakespeare one is inclined to ask not what the Bard is doing for him but rather what he is doing for the Bard. His unprecedented Symphonie…
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Gilbert, Barbican Hall
For the New York Philharmonic to have embarked upon a London residency without Mahler in their portfolio would have been unconscionable. It was they, after all, who brought it to the wider world under their most celebrated…