| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 22-Mar-2013 Mayflower | Welsh National Opera's Butterfly at the Mayflower, Southampton |
 and Cheryl Baker (Madam Butterfly) photo credit Jeni Clegg 33.jpg) 35 years and many revivals after it was first seen, the late Joachim Herz’s version of Madam Butterfly (“Madama” spelt without the “a” here) is still going. For WNO’s themed series of “Free Spirits”, Caroline Chaney took on the revival director’s mantle. The result was a reliable production lacking in originality but not in warmth. Puccini’s Butterfly, so much changed after is disastrous original première in 1904, has rightly found a place among the most popular operas in existence.Read full review... | |
| 27-Nov-2012 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Strange meetings: Britten's War Requiem at the Southbank Centre |
 November continues to be a month of poppy art, despite Philip Larkin’s derisory account of “Wreath-rubbish in Whitehall”. As the only flower to survive the ravished soils of the trenches following the First World War, the poppy is replicated in the form of a paper badge to be worn yearly in commemoration of 11 November, the Armistice Day of 1918. It was deemed to be a symbol of hope and regeneration in the aftermath of devastating combat.Read full review... | |
| 22-Jun-2012 Holland Park Theatre | Zanetto and Gianni Schicchi: Opera Holland Park's Florentine Double Bill |
 After their Mascagni debut last year, with L’amico Fritz (the composer’s first post-Cavalleria opera), Opera Holland Park have set out to uncover more music from the so-called ‘one-hit-wonder’ – still known to most for his smash verismo opera alone. This year, the opera company brings to London audiences an even more rarely performed work by the Tuscan-born musician: the one-act opera Zanetto, in a double bill with Puccini’s much more popular musical comedy, Gianni Schicchi.Read full review... | |
| 19-Apr-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | La Fille du Régiment at Covent Garden |
 The nationality of Gaetano Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment is as confused as that of its eponymous heroine. Written by a homesick Italian expatriate for that most Parisian of venues the Opéra-Comique, it both continued Donizetti's Italian colonisation of the Paris opera scene (much bemoaned by Berlioz) and showed him adapting his style to the conventions of French theatre.
Read full review... | |
