| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 10-Nov-2012 Upstairs at the Gatehouse | Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at Hampstead Garden Opera | David Karlin |
 There’s something pretty special about going to see one of the very first operas ever written. It’s particularly special if you love the rhythms of renaissance dance music, the harmonies of polyphonic choral music and if, as I am, you are an admirer of Claudio Monteverdi’s vocal writing: it’s quite plausible to argue that he remains unmatched in his ability to spin a beautiful vocal thread and weave it around the emotions of a text.
Read full review... | ||
| 9-Nov-2012 Upstairs at the Gatehouse | The underworld upstairs: Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at the Gatehouse, Hampstead | Dorothy Wilson |
 Set in the wonderful theatre upstairs at the Gatehouse pub in Highgate, Hampstead Garden Opera’s new production of L’Orfeo by Monteverdi contained some memorable images and richly resonant chorus passages. However, the plight of the opera’s mythical hero, Orpheus (here played by Edmund Hastings), and his quest to bring his wife Euridice (Natalie Perez), back from the dead, became somewhat muddled within the sparse setting and updating of the production.Read full review... | ||
| 28-Apr-2012 Upstairs at the Gatehouse | A Wartime Così fan tutte | Hilary Fisher |
 Production director Daisy Evans welcomes her audience to Così fan tutte set in October 1943 in Sicily. The set (designed by Katharine Heath) is intriguing, with three propellers along the back wall of the performance space and a small stage at the side set up for an Ensa troupe. However, concerns about the pitfalls of “concept” productions were confirmed from the start. Back-projections of Second World War film footage accompanied the overture; the first of many incongruities and distractions.Read full review... | ||
| 16-Nov-2011 Upstairs at the Gatehouse | Hugh the Drover arrives to enchant | Hilary Fisher |
 There is usually a good reason why operas which lie unperformed for many years do so – some flaw in the plotting, characters who fail to interest an audience, or musical langueurs. It was therefore with somewhat low expectations that I went to Hampstead Garden Opera’s production of Vaughan Williams’ Hugh the Drover. Imagine my surprise and delight. This was a total joy!Read full review... | ||
| 11-Nov-2011 Upstairs at the Gatehouse | Rarely seen in captivity: Vaughan Williams' opera Hugh the Drover | David Karlin |
 We are in a small Cotswold market town in 1810. It's the height of the Napoleonic wars, fear of Bonapartist spies abounds. A stranger rolls into town - a roving man whose profession is rounding up wild horses for the military - and wins the hand of the daughter of the town Constable in a bare knuckle prize fight. Somehow, you just know that there's going to be trouble.
Read full review... | ||
| 13-Apr-2011 Upstairs at the Gatehouse | Handel's Semele at Hampstead Garden Opera | David Karlin |
 When the king of the gods falls head over heels in love with you, seriously bad stuff happens. If you're a Handelian soprano like Semele, however, it happens very tunefully and in a thoroughly pleasant, elegant and cheerful manner for the whole evening.
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| 8-Apr-2011 Upstairs at the Gatehouse | A Sexy and Spirited Semele | Hilary Fisher |
 No wonder the 1744 audience was shocked by this “oratorio” which, far from drawing on Biblical themes, displays before us the sexual misdemeanor of the immortal Jove, with a mortal, Semele. It is the opinion of this reviewer that “concept” productions don’t usually work but Handel seems to need something to help us through all those da capo arias and James Hurley’s imaginative production of “Semele” at the Gatehouse lays bare all the emotional content and adds some extra touches e.g. Juno’s abusive treatment of Iris.Read full review... | ||
| 6-Nov-2010 Upstairs at the Gatehouse | The Magic Flute at Hampstead Garden Opera | Hilary Fisher |
 It might be a useful “rule of thumb” for every director of opera, to imagine the audience will be coming to the opera for the first time and view his own job as giving maximum clarity to the production he or she is working on. I wonder what any first timers made of Hampstead Garden Opera’s production of The Magic Flute Upstairs at The Gatehouse on Saturday evening?Read full review... | ||
| 4-Nov-2010 Upstairs at the Gatehouse | Mozart's Magic Flute at Hampstead Garden Opera | David Karlin |
 Mozart's Magic Flute is so well-known and so well-loved that a director must tread a tricky path. If the production is too conventional, he is accused of being boring and hackneyed; if it's too full of clever inventive ideas, he is accused of betraying the original. Fortunately, the director has one overriding thing going for him: Mozart's music. The opera is a string of knock-your-socks-off numbers: half a dozen of them regularly make it into "opera's greatest hits" collections, and there's another half-dozen that probably would if they weren't eclipsed by the first six.Read full review... | ||
| 23-Apr-2010 Upstairs at the Gatehouse | La Clemenza di Tito - In praise of Mozart in small spaces | David Karlin |
| Mozart's La Clemenza Di Tito was written in the last year of his life around the same time as Die Zauberflöte, the Clarinet Concerto and the Requiem, when Mozart was at the height of his powers. Which is just as well, because he wrote the vast majority of it in a little over two weeks, finishing with just a week to spare before the event for which it was commissioned: one of the coronations of Emperor Leopold II. Read full review... | ||
