Reviews Index
by Sam Smith
Martin Lloyd-Evans’ production of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama achieves an aesthetic that works perfectly with the tone…
Although not a total rarity, Rossini’s Mosè in Egitto is not so frequently performed today, especially in its original Italian version of 1818-19. If this...
Tuesday evening saw the UK première of a semi-staged production of Jake Heggie’s opera Dead Man Walking at the Barbican, as part of the ‘The...
Britten’s War Requiem may have originally been composed to mark the opening of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962, but there could have been no...
Auch kleine Dinge können uns entzücken… the opening line of Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch – ‘Even small things can delight us’ – is the perfect...
‘Who is Carmen. What is she?’ Apologies for butchering Shakespeare, but it’s a question any director of Bizet’s perennial favourite should ask. At opposite ends...
It is a deceptively difficult task for a major opera house to pull off Gilbert and Sullivan, because it is so easy for any production...
Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah seems to be a lot less fashionable these days. Gone are the times when many musical families had a senior member who...
Nobody is entirely sure where the well-known ‘gypsy’ sound of the 17th and 18th centuries came from; almost certainly not the Roma themselves, whose musical...
This presentation of Handel’s Orlando of 1733 from La Nuova Musica highlighted the virtues of keeping things simple when doing so allows natural talent and...
“I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky” Masefield’s well-loved opening to Sea Fever exemplifies Britons’ love of the...
A one-composer evening featuring some of Schubert’s most melancholy, sombre works might not seem the ideal way to spend a dreary Sunday evening, but this...
This performance of Das Rheingold heralded the start of the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s presentation of Der Ring des Nibelungen over four seasons, and constituted a...
This is the start of the fourth year of Classical Opera’s Mozart 250 series, in which it always presents works either written or performed exactly...
Reviewing her performance in the Proms Fidelio last year, we said that Louise Alder’s Marzelline, with her launching of the great Act I quartet, might...
One of the most heart-wrenching facts about Tosca is that a singer and painter who are simply going about their daily lives should find themselves...
In the days of vinyl, Mendelssohn’s violin concerto was sometimes paired with his incidental music for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’; at Monday night’s gala concert...
O Fortunat! O, O, Fortunat’ Ulisse! That most moving of phrases, uttered when the finally returned Ulisse realizes that his reunion with his wife and...
It’s an unconventional staging, but every aspect grabs you from the first rapturous cries of the doomed Narraboth to the final frenzied raptures of Salome’s...
“All the music I’ve written for Him, and nothing in return!” Thus railed Carlo Gesualdo about God in ‘Breaking the Rules’, Clare Norburn’s concert-drama, set...
The now well-established St John’s tradition of pairing the Christmas Oratorio with Messiah, performed on consecutive evenings and both featuring the Orchestra of the Age...
Preview: BBC Proms 2018
Anna Meredith, Natalie Prass, A Hawk And A Hacksaw… This Week In Gigs
Wye Oak – The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs
Lump, Simian Mobile Disco, Manic Street Preachers… Weekend Reads
Gregory Rose at 70 @ St John’s, Smith Square, London
Occasional Oratorio @ St George’s, Hanover Square, London
Interview: Sting & Shaggy – “It was very much an accident”
Slug – Higgledy Piggledy
