| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 10-Feb-2013 Bridgewater Hall | A glowing Meistersinger in Manchester |
 Few things could unite such a large group of people as the Hallé’s Meistersinger did tonight. Some 515 performers, drawn from three orchestras and five choirs, gathered to present highlights from the first two acts of Wagner’s opera and the third act in full. The whole evening was carried off with great warmth, and the roar that answered the last notes was more suggestive of a football match than an opera.
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| 28-Nov-2012 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Erwin Schrott stars in the Metropolitan Opera's Don Giovanni |
 Don Giovanni is perhaps the most difficult of the Mozart–Da Ponte opera trilogy to stage. Not only is there the problem of how exactly the Don is to be consumed in flames at the end of its three-hour span, or the issue of how to make the statue of the Commendatore come to life. There is also the question of how to square the deep sexual and class conflicts that are on display throughout the work with its constant humour. After all, Mozart designated this, his bleakest work, an opera buffa, or comic opera.
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| 27-May-2012 Glyndebourne Opera House | The Cunning Little Vixen at Glyndebourne |
.jpg) If I were to describe Janáček's late opera The Cunning Little Vixen as a bit of a one-off, I could be accused of severe understatement. It's the only opera in the mainstream repertoire to be based on a cartoon strip, it mixes animals and humans at will and it incorporates dance and mime routines, all against the backdrop of the setting of ancient forest so beloved by middle European romantics.Read full review... | |
| 12-Mar-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Judith Weir's Miss Fortune at Covent Garden |
 COOPER (1).jpg) There’s usually plenty of hype surrounding a newly written opera performed at Covent Garden, but the carefully placed stories about Judith Weir’s Miss Fortune are on the improbable end of the scale, featuring a flying kebab shop and a team of breakdancers. So I arrived at Miss Fortune without any real idea of what I was going to get. A short 90 minutes of music later, I’m still not entirely sure what it is I’ve just seen.
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