Opera and Classical Reviews
by Sam Smith
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,…
by Melanie Eskenazi
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...
by Melanie Eskenazi
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...
by Barry Creasy
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...
by Keith McDonnell
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...
by Benjamin Poore
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...
by Benjamin Poore
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...
by Sam Smith
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...
by Keith McDonnell
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,...
by Keith McDonnell
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...
by Barry Creasy
Max Raabe is mostly known for being the vocalist for Das Palast Orchester and their interpretations of ‘swing-style’ music from the Weimar Republic of the...
by Melanie Eskenazi
Opera North’s genuinely funny, true ‘company’ version of Mozart’s great work would be an ideal introduction to opera as well as a definite crowd pleaser...
by Barry Creasy
Over the past decade, the choir of Royal Holloway under Rupert Gough has made a name for itself, releasing 15 albums to date, not a...
by Benjamin Poore
‘You are invited to join us in the music-making’, Sir Roger Norrington told the audience before the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment launched Beethoven’s...
by Barry Creasy
January usually sees the arrival of the London A Cappella Festival, but the organisers have decided to let 2020 lie fallow. As compensation, though, the...
by Barry Creasy
Although there were some charming musical highlights to La Nuova Musica’s A French Affair on Thursday evening, the concert seemed to suffer from a lack...
by Melanie Eskenazi
Robert Carsen’s production of La Traviata was the first staged work at the ‘new’ Fenice in 2004 and, although some of the concepts now look...
by Benjamin Poore
Two concerts from the London Sinfonietta chart ‘the sound across a century’. This first, led by Thierry Fischer, explores one tendril of the twentieth-century avant-garde:...
by Barry Creasy
The baritone Benjamin Appl made his name singing Schubert Lieder, but his proficiency with works of an earlier era was demonstrated in his 2018...
by Sam Smith
No one who heard Christian Gerhaher sing ‘Oh du mein holder Abendstern’ in Tannhäuser at the Royal Opera House in 2010 and 2016 will ever...
by Steven Johnson
Shankar 100 is a year long series taking place at the Southbank Centre commemorating the centenary of the birth of Ravi Shankar. He may be...
