| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 11-Feb-2013 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | When Pushkin comes to shove: Kasper Holten's Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera House |
 BILL COOPER.jpg) Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is one of the most beautiful scores in the operatic repertoire, and I don’t blame people who come to it looking forward to immersing themselves in the warm bath of the familiar story and music. For many of the audience – and, it has to be said, critics – Kasper Holten’s deconstructed Onegin clearly felt as if nanny had taken teddy away and left a book on German Expressionist cinema in its place.
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| 31-Mar-2012 National Theatre | Otello in Munich: Everything Opera Should Be |
 Wilfried Hösl IMG_6954.jpg) Otello is usually considered to be Verdi’s most mature opera. It was one of the last ones he wrote, the result of a plot by his publisher Riccordi and the conductor Franco Faccio to draw him out of early retirement. The result is a work which combines all the aspects of Verdi’s earlier operatic style with Wagner’s concept of Gesamtkunstwerk. Unlike the operas up to Aida, Otello does away with the strict “aria-recitative” division, moving towards the more fluid style of Wagner.Read full review... | |
| 16-Feb-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Schrott thrills in a mixed Don Giovanni |
 It's the most spectacular entrance in opera: the giant stone statue bursts in to join Don Giovanni at the dinner table; a pair of sweeping downward octave swoops in D minor fills the audience (and the hapless Leporello) with terror at the rake's imminent descent into hell.
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