Opera and Classical Reviews
by Sam Smith
Sam Smith compares Cosìs, as the Royal Opera streams a classic production
by Melanie Eskenazi
Melanie Eskenazi attends a live performance without leaving her sofa
by Barry Creasy
During coronavirus lockdown, the LSO are making concerts from their digital archive available
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....
by Sam Smith
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...
by Benjamin Poore
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...
by Melanie Eskenazi
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...
by Melanie Eskenazi
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...
by Melanie Eskenazi
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...
by Sam Smith
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,...
by Barry Creasy
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...
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...
