| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 8-Mar-2013 Hackney Empire | James Conway's updated Simon Boccanegra with ETO at Hackney Empire |
 English Touring Opera’s Verdi title for their Spring season in this composer’s (and Wagner’s) anniversary year is one of no small ambition. Premièred to only modest success in Venice in 1857, it would take Verdi another 20 or so years to return to Simon Boccanegra to try to fix the old “wobbly table” (as he and his librettist, Boito, later dubbed the 1857 version). Launched in a thoroughly revised version at La Scala, Milan in 1881, the work remained relatively unpopular with audiences for many years.Read full review... | |
| 2-Feb-2013 The London Coliseum | Disentangling La Traviata with Konwitschny at ENO |
 Of the many and varied operatic openings, that of La Traviata is one that I find increasingly demanding on an emotional level. The mournful harmonies and diaphanous scoring for strings that start off the prelude notoriously portray ill-fated Violetta moments before she dies of TB, returning in the final act as her destiny is about to be fulfilled.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... | |
| 20-Mar-2012 St John's Fulham | Fulham Opera: Gianni Schicchi |
| Fulham Opera’s 2012 season is, once again, one dedicated to Puccini and Wagner. Last year, the company brought to stage Puccini’s Suor Angelica – the long-unpopular middle opera of his Il trittico – and the opening work of Wagner’s Ring cycle, Das Rheingold. This season, St. John’s Church, Fulham, the company’s traditional venue, is hosting the last opera of Puccini’s triple bill, Gianni Schicchi, and the second of Wagner’s epic cycle, Die Walküre – two works that pose very different challenges for this ambitious independent opera group. Read full review... | |
| 28-Feb-2012 Barbican Theatre | Beguiling Britten: GSMD's A Midsummer Night's Dream |
 c.Clive Barda.jpg) Britten’s only Shakespeare opera was a last-minute commission to celebrate the opening of the refurbished Jubilee Hall at the 1960 Aldeburgh Festival. Despite the narrow timescale, Britten and his collaborator and partner Peter Pears notoriously strove to adhere to the sixteen-century dramatic text as closely as possible. Only a handful of Shakespeare’s original lines were substantially modified. However, to avoid excessive length, Britten removed the play’s entire first act, set in Athens.Read full review... | |
| 27-Jan-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Miller's no-frills Mozart is back: Così fan tutte at the Royal Opera House |
 PERSSON.jpg) The last opera of the Mozart/Da Ponte cycle – the second of the composer’s operas to be performed in this Mozart-dominated season at the Royal Opera House – Così fan tutte pivots on two pairs of young lovers whose affection is put to the test by an old ‘philosopher’, Don Alfonso. Women, the old man argues, are all the same: never constant in their love, never loyal to their men. It takes three hours of musical comedy and a long list of artfully arranged expedients to demonstrate the sage’s maxim.Read full review... | |
| 30-Nov-2011 Royal College of Music: Britten Theatre | Operatic Miniatures Uncovered: A Bizet Double Bill at the Royal College of Music |
 When one sets off to the opera to attend what is usually called a ‘double bill’, one will, most of the time, expect to see two operas clearly contrasting in character. More unusual is to find two extremely different works, hardly sharing anything between themselves, presented in a reading that digs deep for any possible echoes. This Bizet double bill, presented by students of the Royal College of Music, is undoubtedly in the last category: a rather peculiar dittico.
Read full review... | |
