Classical and Opera Reviews
by Sam Smith
This concert from the Early Opera Company, conducted by Christian Curnyn, presented John Blow’s Venus and Adonis alongside excerpts from Christopher Gibbons and Matthew Locke’s Cupid and Death….
Parnasso in festa, per li sponsali di Teti e Peleo, HWV73 of 1734 was the only full scale serenata, a type of opera intended to mark...
In Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus the late music of Beethoven is described as “an art that had overgrown itself”. Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s performance of the Hammerklavier...
You that look pale, and tremble at this chance That are but mutes, or audience to this act… The connection between the witnesses to actions...
Those of us lucky enough to live in Thirsk in North Yorkshire are not just fortunate in our Vet, our glorious surrounding scenery and our...
This recital was both the final concert in the Leeds Lieder 2019-20 season, and a taster for the forthcoming 2020 Festival, which takes place over...
Founded in 1998, Longborough Festival Opera is possibly the only summer opera venue in the United Kingdom that puts Wagner at the centre of its...
Since the move to West Horsley Place in 2017, Grange Park Opera has re-established itself as one of the essential destinations for audiences who love...
The Angel Esmeralda is a new opera, adapted from Don DeLillo’s eponymous short story by former Scottish Opera Emerging Artist Composer in Residence Lliam Paterson,...
While part of the delight of Glyndebourne, Garsington and the Granges is the act of making a day of it, Opera Holland Park’s unique selling...
The Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) Symphony Orchestra returned to London on Thursday with their Chief Conductor Paavo Järvi, to give excellent accounts of three works...
This concert by The Sixteen showed that it is slightly easier to divide two halves of an evening (broadly) between the religious and the secular,...
Opera North has scored another big hit with this superbly conducted, well sung and impeccably designed production of Kurt Weill’s ‘Broadway opera.’ In some ways...
Opera North continues its superbly varied season with this revival of Alessandro Talevi’s much-praised production. Don’t go expecting the now fashionable onstage lake or much...
Part serial, part late-Romantic, Alban Berg’s violin concerto stands at a musical crossroads; the harbinger of 20th century Modernism, it needs to be fully inhabited...
The Teatro Real is assembling its Ring Cycle one opera per season, concluding in 2022, conveniently coinciding with the company’s silver jubilee. As yet there’s...
Verdi’s Luisa Miller is rarely staged in London, so this production from German-based Czech director Barbora Horáková, a longtime collaborator of Calixto Bieito, was sure...
The chapter John Eliot Gardiner dedicates to Bach’s B Minor Mass in his book on the composer is titled ‘The Art of Perfection’. The Mass...
Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen sang Ariadne at Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 2017 and Freia, Ortlinde and Third Norn in Covent Garden’s 2018 Ring Cycle. Many...
Beethoven here, Beethoven there – in fact he’s everywhere this year as the musical world throws itself headlong into Beethoven 250. It is, of course,...
Iván Fischer is renowned for re-examining familiar works, deconstructing them and even reconfiguring the orchestra, with players seated where you wouldn’t normally expect to see...
