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Month: June 2018

Henry Waddington’s supremely subtle Falstaff at Garsington

Posted on June 18, 2018June 18, 2018 by Michael Church
Falstaff, Garsington Opera at Wormsley In three weeks’ time the Royal Opera will revive its version of Falstaff which, with Bryn Terfel in the title role, will doubtless sell out. But in Garsingtonâ... Read More

Mamzer – a production in urgent need of quality control

Posted on June 15, 2018June 16, 2018 by Michael Church
Mamzer Bastard, Hackney Empire, London The term mamzer denotes someone who bears the stigma of having been born out of a forbidden relationship, as defined by Jewish religious law: this new opera by N... Read More

With Joelle Harvey the brilliant McVicar ‘Giulio Cesare’ finds its perfect Cleopatra

Posted on June 11, 2018June 16, 2018 by Michael Church
Giulio Cesare, Glyndebourne Festival Opera With its plum roles for the castrato Senesino and the soprano Francesca Cuzzoni, Handel’s Giulio Cesare enjoyed huge success when it opened in 1724; no oth... Read More

The Grange Festival kicks off with an enjoyably licentious Agrippina

Posted on June 9, 2018June 11, 2018 by Michael Church
Agrippina, Grange Festival, Hampshire One by one the country house opera companies are getting into gear. Now it’s the Grange Festival – not to be confused with Grange Park Opera, of whose neo-cla... Read More

Opera Holland Park’s lovely Traviata

Posted on June 8, 2018June 10, 2018 by Michael Church
La Traviata, Opera Holland Park, London While Richard Eyre’s ironclad Traviata draws the crowd year in year out at Covent Garden, English National Opera repeatedly tries and fails to come up with a ... Read More

Netia Jones misses the point of the Flute

Posted on June 8, 2018June 10, 2018 by Michael Church
Die Zauberflöte, Garsington Opera at Wormsley When the lights go up on Netia Jones’s production of Die Zauberflöte, we see that she’s turned the stage into a near-simulacrum of the formal garde... Read More

A supremely elegant Capriccio at Garsington

Posted on June 8, 2018June 10, 2018 by Michael Church
The most amazing thing about Richard Strauss’s final opera is when and where it was first performed: Munich in 1942, when those who turned up to see it did so despite the risk of being caught in an ... Read More

In praise of Paul Lewis

Posted on June 8, 2018June 10, 2018 by Michael Church
Paul Lewis, Royal Festival Hall, London The British pianist Paul Lewis doesn’t have a wide repertoire, but he focuses on his chosen composers with white-hot intensity. For a while this meant wall-to... Read More

David Alden’s Lohengrin

Posted on June 8, 2018June 8, 2018 by Michael Church
Lohengrin, Royal Opera House, London Just have faith in our love, says Elsa’s white knight after his arrival in a boat pulled by a swan, making it a condition of matrimony that she should never ask ... Read More

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