Kerry Ellis/ Will Stuart at the Pheasantry
So, ok, we know all about Kerry Ellis’s rocky power belt, the vocal laser that carried Elphaba into the stratosphere and dug down and dirty with Meatloaf and bared all, vocally and emotionally speaking, with Queen’s “No-One…
The week in brief
I’m thinking of making this a regular feature – a quick resume of my movements during and impressions of the week just past: I checked briefly into the BBC – and the popular Radio 4 programme “Last…
A Conversation With DAVID McVICAR & SARAH CONNOLLY: Charpentier’s ‘Medea’
Backstage at English National Opera, David McVicar & Sarah Connolly discuss Charpentier’s Medea. It is Wednesday 6 February and just prior to the afternoon stage rehearsal at the London Coliseum I sit down with David McVicar and Sarah…
A Conversation With SIR JOHN ELIOT GARDINER
Sir John Eliot Gardiner dislikes being branded a “Baroque specialist” and with a discography exceeding 250 recordings and embracing a bewildering diversity of repertoire one can understand why. From Monteverdi to The Merry Widow he is and…
Tchaikovsky “Eugene Onegin”, Royal Opera House (Review)
We begin where we will end – with Onegin and Tatyana closing the door on the life that was and the life that might have been. It’s one of the great “what ifs” of opera and Kasper…
Verdi “La Traviata”, English National Opera, London Coliseum (Review)
So this is La Traviata laid bare, stripped of all superfluities (some chorus, all ballet, offstage reveries in the final scene), and played out “in secret”, as it were, behind closed curtains. Actually the director Peter Konwitschny…
A Conversation With SIR BRYN TERFEL
Fresh from four cycles of Wagner’s Ring at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and a run of performances in one of his signature roles – Wagner’s Flying Dutchman – the great Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel was…
Philharmonia Orchestra, Zimerman, Salonen, Royal Festival Hall (Review)
Of all the heavyweight anniversaries being celebrated this year the name of Witold Lutoslawski will have been less at the forefront of peoples’ minds had the Philharmonia Orchestra and their Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor not chosen…
The elusive Heather Headley
If the comments coming into this site and the buzz around town is anything to go by, Heather Headley – star of the West End’s new hit “The Bodyguard” – is more likely to be found on…
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Rattle, Royal Festival Hall (Review)
Period instruments demand absolute honesty from their players. Their sound is their personality – candid, quirky, eccentrically beautiful – but their soul is revealed in the spirit of the playing where beauty is not skin deep and…