| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 9-Mar-2013 Hackney Empire | Donizetti re-done: The Siege of Calais with English Touring Opera in Hackney | Paul Kilbey |
 A very concise, two-act opera which tells a bleak wartime tale of sacrifice, rarely performed and never realised to the satisfaction of its own composer. You could be forgiven for thinking I was describing something from 20th-century Germany, perhaps an expressionist work taking after Berg’s Wozzeck or similar. You’d be wrong. It’s by Donizetti, and English Touring Opera are currently presenting this opera’s first ever professional British production, having started their tour this weekend at Hackney Empire.
Read full review... | ||
| 8-Mar-2013 Hackney Empire | James Conway's updated Simon Boccanegra with ETO at Hackney Empire | Francesca Vella |
 English Touring Opera’s Verdi title for their Spring season in this composer’s (and Wagner’s) anniversary year is one of no small ambition. Premièred to only modest success in Venice in 1857, it would take Verdi another 20 or so years to return to Simon Boccanegra to try to fix the old “wobbly table” (as he and his librettist, Boito, later dubbed the 1857 version). Launched in a thoroughly revised version at La Scala, Milan in 1881, the work remained relatively unpopular with audiences for many years.Read full review... | ||
| 2-Mar-2013 Hackney Empire | A frivolous Così fan tutte: English Touring Opera at Hackney Empire | Emily Owen |
 Mozart’s Così fan tutte is a comic opera filled with deceit, disguises and betrayal, all carried along by a breathtaking score and witty lyrics. What better way to start ETO’s Spring 2013 season than with a new rendering of this timeless work, in a brilliantly clever English translation by Martin Fitzpatrick. The curtain rose to reveal a simple, minimalistic set, designed by Samal Blak, who is the combined set and costume designer for all three of ETO’s operas this season.Read full review... | ||
| 11-Oct-2012 Royal Opera House: Linbury Studio Theatre | Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse at the Linbury Studio Theatre | Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade |
 With its small raised platform and steeply seated audience, the Linbury Studio Theatre was an auspicious venue for the English Touring Opera’s production of Peter Maxwell Davies’ chamber opera The Lighthouse (1979). The trelliswork of metal bars encircling the stalls and the bleak lighting effects gave this performance a befittingly industrial air. Truncated by a curved wall, the stage effectively drew spectators into the claustrophobic world of this maritime signal tower as well as its wider aura of isolation.
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| 6-Oct-2012 Royal Opera House: Linbury Studio Theatre | English Touring Opera perform Britten's Albert Herring in London | Emily Owen |
 “Community, exclusion, rejection and desire”, writes director Christopher Rolls about English Touring Opera’s production of Albert Herring. “Doesn’t sound like a recipe for an uproarious comedy does it?Read full review... | ||
| 5-Oct-2012 Royal Opera House: Linbury Studio Theatre | Brilliant but flawed: English Touring Opera's The Emperor of Atlantis | David Karlin |
 When Emperor Überall decrees an all-pervasive war that will result in the death of his whole population, Death takes umbrage at the fact that his job is being usurped and, in the mother of all demarcation disputes, goes on strike. Death, it turns out, is something of a stickler for procedure, refusing to take away his friend the Harlequin because his name isn’t on the list yet; he and Harlequin coolly observe proceedings as soldiers are unable to kill each other, eventually forcing the Emperor to confront the nature of his regime and of war itself.
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| 9-Mar-2012 Hackney Empire | Eugene Onegin with English Touring Opera | Capriccio, capricciomusic.blogspot.com |
 Eugene Onegin is one of the greatest of all operas, both musically and dramatically: Tchaikovsky's temperament and compositional proclivities find in the libretto the perfect characters and subject matter such that his particular genius is allowed to flourish and bloom, more fully and voluptuously than he ever managed before or after in the genre of opera.
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| 8-Mar-2012 Hackney Empire | ETO serve up classic comedy in The Barber of Seville | David Karlin |
 The Barber of Seville and Eugene Onegin, the two operas being toured by English Touring Opera this season, share two things: they are both highly melodic stalwarts of the repertoire, and their plots both revolve around the writing of love letters. Beyond that, however, they couldn't be more different: Onegin laden with angst and regret, and The Barber the most frivolous and frothiest of romantic comedies.Read full review... | ||
| 3-Nov-2011 Harrogate Theatre | English Touring Opera: The Fairy Queen goes to Bedlam | Jane Shuttleworth |
 Purcell’s The Fairy Queen is a tricky thing to stage. It’s not an opera, with its own story-line, but a masque, a series of musical interludes intended to slot into a performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. One solution could be just to perform it in concert, but the music is so dramatic that it lends itself wonderfully to stage action. The other option is to construct an entirely new drama around the text, as Philip Pickett did so cleverly last year.
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| 17-May-2011 Durham Gala Theatre | ETO Clemenza di Tito: the Good Dictator | Jane Shuttleworth |
 Mozart’s penultimate opera, La Clemenza di Tito is a curious work; probably the least known of his major operas, it is heavy on the recitative and lacks any “big tunes”, but it has a fascinating and timeless plot, which offers moments of high drama and eloquently depicts the loneliness of the supreme ruler.
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