Reviews Index
by Sam Smith
The best productions of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw are those that manage to do two contradictory things. On the one hand, they bring…
An unusual concert of non-opera works by Italian opera composers The London Symphony Orchestra and London Symphony Chorus were joined by soloists Benjamin Bernheim and...
Rossini wrote Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 1815. At the time Italy was not a unified country, which meant...
‘Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.’ The Brexit mantra seems to fit perfectly with this new opera by Howard Moody, in which families are...
Sometimes, a hot bath of a concert is just what’s needed, and The London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski provided precisely such a luxurious and...
“It lowers all women, cannot possibly please female spectators…” Schröder’s famous view of da Ponte’s libretto for Così is neatly echoed in this Jan Philipp...
With the performances presented in a converted barn, and dining constituting part of the event, Bury Court Opera provides a summer opera experience in the...
‘You’d think after my brother the snake was born they’d have stopped at one’ was the thought that suddenly popped into the head of the...
The National Theatre’s 2017 production of Sondheim’s Follies was regarded as such a hit on every level that one had to wonder whether a revival...
Les Talens Lyriques’ interpretations of seven Monteverdi madrigals from Book VIII – compiled in the latter decades of Monteverdi’s life – on Thursday evening provided...
Monday evening’s recital at the Wigmore Hall was underscored by the sound of arrows missing targets. Holding a ‘Learning Gala Concert’ to highlight the educational...
The performance of the last item in the evening’s programme, R. Strauss’ Vier letzte Lieder as arranged for voice and chamber orchestra by James Ledger,...
Valentine’s Day at the Wigmore Hall was never going to be an affair of chocolates, flowers and overwrought romanticism, and Stile Antico’s presentation of Renaissance...
The Queen Elizabeth Hall was a slightly unusual choice of venue for Crouch End Festival Chorus’s performance of Elgar’s Gerontius, and the onstage personnel (120-strong...
This production of Katya Kabanova is the second in the Royal Opera House’s long-awaited Janáček cycle, which began with From the House of the Dead...
The original Swingles group was formed in Paris in 1962; with a move to London in the early 70s and a few variations on their...
A year following the Bourbon Restoration of 1814, Louis XVIII had the remains of his executed relatives (Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette) re-interred in the crypt...
Although the majority of events in the 2019 London Handel Festival do not begin until late March, the strong musical credentials that underlay La Nuova...
This concert from violinist Alina Ibragimova and pianist Cédric Tiberghien provided everything that one might expect from this outstanding long-term partnership, and perhaps a little...
A German interviewer once asked the Austrian baritone Florian Boesch, how Wigmore Hall audiences respond to recitals, given that they are English and Lieder is...
What’s Opera, Doc? For Stefan Herheim, it’s clearly not a comfortable evening’s entertainment – this first London showing of Herheim’s brilliant 2016 production for Dutch...
