Briefly… ENO’s Boheme revisited
Like all the great music theatre pieces you only really see and feel their greatness when the acting is honest, true, and sure. In the case of Puccini’s La Boheme youth is a factor, too, and when…
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 “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…
Bizet “Carmen”, English National Opera, London Coliseum
There are few directors who can realise the potential of bodies on stage as dramatically as Calixto Bieito. Toilet cubicles aside (and it says something of our national press that this has become the image most associated…
Vaughan Williams “Pilgrim’s Progress”, English National Opera, London Coliseum
Not for nothing did Vaughan Williams frame his “Morality” The Pilgim’s Progress with scenes of John Bunyan imprisoned. Bunyan would not conform to Church of England doctrines and neither, in his way, would Vaughan Williams. The Pilgrim’s…
Mozart “Don Giovanni”, English National Opera, London Coliseum (Review)
“Coming Soon”, declares the contentious poster, though even the notion that Don Giovanni would have the time or the inclination to open the packet leave alone use the condom hardly squares with the reckless dash of Mozart…
Martinu “Julietta”, English National Opera – Review ****
Julietta. The name is spelt out across the front cloth in the shifting body shapes of a sleeping figure – Michel Lepic, a bookseller (Peter Hoare). He stirs where the final “A” should be and with a…
Prom 55: Britten “Peter Grimes”, English National Opera, Edward Gardner – Review ****
You can take the opera out of the opera house but you can’t take the opera house out of the opera – not when the spirit of David Alden’s benchmark 2009 production of Britten’s Peter Grimes resides…
Albarn & Norris “Dr Dee”, English National Opera
A blackbird descends, Damon Albarn sings of England, and a cavalcade of our national identity – from punk rocker to city gent, cricket to morris dancing, suffragettes to Lord Nelson – passes before our eyes, each representative…
Britten “Billy Budd”, English National Opera
The sight of Kim Begley’s old and broken Captain Vere silently mouthing Billy Budd’s death sentence as it is read out in the final scene of Britten’s opera will be one of the enduring images of David…