| 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.
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| 19-Jul-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Jette Parker Young Artists Tenth Anniversary celebrated at ROH: Il Viaggio a Reims |
 BARDA.jpg) The Tenth Anniversary of the Royal Opera House’s Jette Parker Young Artists Scheme is a landmark of no small size. This summer performance brought back some of the best singers it has produced for a semi-staged rendition of Rossini’s one-act 1825 opera Il Viaggio a Reims. It was a celebratory display of virtuoso held together with a generous dose of self-indulgence.
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| 19-May-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Robert Carsen's new Falstaff at Covent Garden |
 In the end, the big man gets the last laugh. Come to think of it, he also gets the first laugh, but for different reasons: you sense that Verdi steadily grew to love Falstaff in the course of writing the opera, as he turns from a coarse buffoon into a maligned old man and, eventually, into the spirit of laughter itself. Last night at Covent Garden, Italian Baritone Ambrogio Maestri was the perfect embodiment of the role: Maestri makes you feel that he loves Falstaff every bit as much as Verdi; a big man singing a larger than life role.Read full review... | |
| 4-Feb-2012 Theatre Royal | A Traditional Hänsel and Gretel from Scottish Opera |
 with The Witch (Leah-Marian Jones), (c) Richard Campbell.jpg) It has become customary to give recent productions of Hänsel and Gretel a modern and often murkier twist, perhaps mirroring the current surge in popularity of darker stories, and the appetite for Nordic noir in particular. Humperdinck’s sister Adelheid Wette adapted the tale from the original Grimm brothers, lightening it considerably in the process, for her own children to perform with some songs composed by her brother. The opera eventually followed.Read full review... | |
