| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 11-May-2013 The London Coliseum | Bring your mental body armour: Wozzeck at ENO | David Karlin |
 Military service brutalises. If you’re in any doubt about this, Berg’s short opera Wozzeck should dispel them, and particularly so in Carrie Cracknell’s new production for ENO. The fragmentary play on which Wozzeck is based, by Georg Büchner, originated in a true story of a soldier in the Napoleonic wars and was edited and published after the Franco-Prussian war; Berg wrote the opera in the aftermath of World War I; Cracknell moves it to the British military of today. It could be in any place at any time.
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| 21-Nov-2012 The London Coliseum | Danger, sleaze, passion: Carmen re-imagined at ENO | David Karlin |
 Alastair Muir-sm.jpg) Carmen has always been in my head as a “pretty” opera: lovely tunes, colourful setting, exotically alluring gypsy brushing up against hunky bullfighter and handsome soldier - not exactly French Grand Opera, perhaps, but a far cry from gritty verismo. Calixto Bieito changed all that last night, with a production for ENO that strips the story down to its bare essentials, and left me thrilled beyond measure.
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| 24-Aug-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 55: ENO performs Britten's Peter Grimes on the concert stage | Julia Savage |
 With most of the original cast of English National Opera's critically acclaimed production returning to the Royal Albert Hall to perform Britten's Peter Grimes for the BBC Proms, this was a performance of which much of the audience had high expectations. For the most part, these were met and, on occasion, exceeded.
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| 19-Aug-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 49: Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard | David Karlin |
 When choosing a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta to be performed at the Proms in a year firmly branded as "London 2012", The Yeomen of the Guard had obvious appeal, being set in one of the capital's most famous landmarks, and giving the opportunity, even in semi-staged form, to deck the hall with Beefeater uniforms. And indeed, if you include excerpts, this Sullivan operetta has had 62 outings at the Proms, more than any other Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.
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| 19-Sep-2011 The London Coliseum | Draining but rewarding - Weinberg's The Passenger at ENO | David Karlin |
 The glittering white of a luxury cruise liner above, the darkened hell of the concentration camp below. Johan Engels' set for Weinberg's The Passenger, first seen at the Bregenz festival in 2010 and now at the ENO in London, is one of the most striking and effective opera sets I've ever seen, both framing the action and adding colour. Many details add emotional resonance: the pervasive railway tracks, or the follow spotlights operated by camp guards on watchtowers.
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| 14-Aug-2011 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 41: Prophetic Britten | Andrew Benson-Wilson |
 This was a recreation of a Proms concert that Benjamin Britten conducted in 1963, but with a contemporary twist. The original concert opened with Britten’s own respectful version of Purcell’s Chacony in G minor but, on this occasion, we heard the world premiere of a BBC commission: Joby Talbot’s take on the same piece, an evocative and atmospheric essay in orchestral colour set within a halo of bell sounds.
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| 20-Nov-2010 The London Coliseum | Raskatov's A Dog's Heart: new opera at the ENO | David Karlin |
 Last night saw the UK première of Alexander Raskatov's new opera A Dog's Heart, performed by ENO together with theatre company Complicite. The opera, based on a 1925 novella by Russian satirist Mikhail Bulgakov, tells the tale of Sharik, a stray dog who is given the testicles and pituitary gland of a human by an eminent surgeon, the Professor. The transplant is intended as an experiment in rejuvenation, but to everyone's astonishment, the treatment has a different effect: the good dog Sharik turns into a dreadful human, Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov.
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