| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 24-Oct-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | The cycle concludes: Götterdämmerung at the Royal Opera |
 Monumental in scale and scope, Götterdämmerung is a work to which it is hard to be indifferent. For many, the idea of an evening of fantasy opera lasting nearly seven hours is unimaginable, so uncongenial is the subject material and so great the attention span demanded. For Wagner fans - and Ring fans in particular - it's a riveting theatrical and musical experience, the zenith of opera as an art form. Last night at Covent Garden was my first live Götterdämmerung, spent in the company of around three thousand of those fans.
Read full review... | |
| 11-Jan-2012 Birmingham Symphony Hall | Pappano's triumphant Royal Opera House Meistersinger in Birmingham |
 The classical world came off lightly in the recent New Year Honours list, with the Royal Opera House’s knighted Antonio Pappano the only winner. He has much to celebrate, more so after directing last night’s concert performance of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with authoritative ease and good cheer, supported by a fine array of soloists.
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| 1-Aug-2011 Großes Festspielhaus | The Salzburg Festival's Die Frau ohne Schatten |
 Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal began their collaboration on Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow) with utopian ambitions. Unfortunately they weren’t the same ones. For Hofmannsthal, this would finally be the opera where his poetry would be illuminated by rather than buried under the music. For Strauss, this was to be his magnum opus, the self-proclaimed “last Romantic opera” that would cement his place in musical history.Read full review... | |
