| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 6-Oct-2012 MuseumsQuartier Wien: Hall E | Le grand macabre at the Neue Oper Wien |
 With sub-Ionesco doggerel for a libretto, a patchy score and a disjointed plot, it takes deft stage direction for farce and satire to blend credibly in Le grand macabre, Ligeti’s 1977 operatic spoof on doom-laden prophesizing. It’s hard to say whether this production for the Neue Oper Wien, directed by Carlos Wagner, genuinely did that, at least judged against the lurid anti-materialist theatricality of the La Fura dels Baus co-production put on at ENO in 2009, and yet one image left purposefully unaccounted for amid the slapstick focused attention for the evening.
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| 24-Jul-2012 Holland Park Theatre | Verdi's Falstaff at Opera Holland Park |
 With Verdi's centenary coming up, his last opera Falstaff has had more attention than usual, with this production at Opera Holland Park following hot on the heels of Robert Carsen's new production at Covent Garden. I don't know whether OHP's director Annilese Miskimmon was aware of Carsen's production, but she certainly ended up with a similar aesthetic, set in twentieth century England with pastel-clad posh housewives and much brown clothing for the men.Read full review... | |
| 25-May-2012 The London Coliseum | Caligula slain in the Coliseum: A triumph for ENO |
 Where could be more appropriate to see the story of Caligula, Rome’s most notorious emperor/self-proclaimed God, than in the Coliseum! Its purple SPQR livery made the opening to this performance all the more striking as Caligula, dishevelled, unhinged and not a little scary, crept on stage through the curtain in dead silence. So the decidedly menacing tone of the opera was set before the curtain had even been raised or a sound heard. When the curtain rises we see his sister collapse, dead, and he releases a primal scream to spark up the orchestra.
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| 24-Mar-2011 Young Vic | Ulysses is back. And he's mean, armed and dangerous. |
 ENO's latest première matches a young theatre director with a reputation for cutting-edge drama to one of the earliest operas in the repertoire, in the less-than-conventionally-operatic surroundings of London's Young Vic. It's an improbable combination, and I wasn't at all sure what to expect.
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