Charpentier “Medea”, English National Opera, London Coliseum (Review)
Hell hath no fury… and in Medea’s case comes so precipitously that even her children must be taken from the room whenever her demons threaten an unscheduled appearance. That is but one of many telling details that…
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…
Wagner “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Some pieces you just have to trust and trust implicitly. When a text is as good as Wagner’s Die Meistersinger it’s a wise director who takes a step back and let the words, the characters, the bountiful…
Verdi “Aida”, Royal Opera House
David McVicar’s darkly primitivist Aida was a necessary antidote to the whole tedious tradition of sub-De Mille spectacle in this piece. The cleverest thing about his staging – and I cannot for the life of me work…
Adriana sensitively exhumed
Kaufmann and Gheorghiu were not the only star attractions of this early and clearly expensive Christmas gift from the Royal Opera. Cilea’s Frenchified melodrama hasn’t been seen in the house since 1906 and the dusty wing space…