Iolanthe, ENO, 13.2.18 Arthur Sullivan and WS Gilbert didn’t like each other, didn’t have much in common, and both had loftier ambitions than the creation of operettas. But if they’d stuc...Read More
Opera moves with the times: it’s no surprise that a Carmen in tune with the #metoo movement should open in Florence, with the exasperated heroine shooting her jealous lover dead. But that’s...Read More
The Return of Ulysses, Roundhouse, 9.1.18 Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria is an ecstatically melodious succession of recitatives, duets, and arias telling of war, exile, love, and reven...Read More
Genesis Suite, Barbican, 13.1.18 In 1943, as news of the Holocaust and the mass flight of refugees was coming through, a Jewish New York musician named Nat Shilkret had an idea for a musical re...Read More
Salome, Royal Opera House, 10.1.18 Richard Strauss based his Salome on Oscar Wilde’s play (written in French and banned in Britain) which turned on two taboo sexual obsessions: Herod’s for ...Read More
Simon Trpceski and friends, Wigmore Hall, 21.1.18 We are accustomed to thinking of Simon Trpceski as a superlative pianist with a hotline to Beethoven, Brahms and the most rebarbative music of ...Read More
Wigmore Hall: Gabriela Montero, Nov 14; Daniil Trifonov, Dec 7u; Ivana Gavric, Dec 28 St John’s Smith Square: Vikingur Olafsson, Nov 15; Julian Jacobson, Nov 26 It’s not keyboard artistry w...Read More
Angela Hewitt, Wigmore Hall, 26.1.18 There’s something heroic about Angela Hewitt’s Bach. This Canadian pianist has made Bach’s keyboard music the core of her performing life, twice taking it on...Read More
Satyagraha, ENO, 1.1.18 ‘Masterpiece’ – like ‘great’, ‘iconic’, and ‘legendary’ – is a word which should be used sparingly by critics, if at all. But it is absolutel...Read More
Drum children There’s a felicitous double meaning in Kodo, the name of the celebrated Japanese drumming ensemble. Its written characters mean ‘drum child’, but an infinitesimally different...Read More