Fifty years ago, Christopher Hogwood grafted a new shoot to the tree of British classical music. His brainchild, the Academy of Ancient Music, was to champion the performance of Baroque music on contemporary instruments, providing listeners with a better understanding...
As BA cabin arrival announcements go, on landing at Larnaca in Cyprus, this was a doozy. “For those of you who have turned on your mobile phones and hit the ‘Maps’ button, we are not in Beirut”. Of course, I immediately disabled flight mode and fingered my iPhone...
All out Handel cyber-attack in Halle, Germany. Hang on! Cyber? Baroque, surely, at this 8th-century city’s annual Handelfest. You know, the towering headdresses, spangled costumes, descending Gods in fiery chariots, courtly dances, lots of standing about singing at...
Baroque opera, based as it usually is on improbable ancient myths and legends, nearly always benefits from a fresh eye from a bold director. If today’s audiences are to understand what the hell is going on, a quirky take will grab attention. Louisa Proske, Resident...
I had to respond to Reaction’s imperious demand; the motto is “Nessun Dorma” (no one sleeps). Berlin, Sunday, 12 May 15:00 CET: Unter den Linden. Event? Opera Meets New Media, an exhibition in the stunning Bertelsmann building illustrating...
In Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Enrico Ashton gaslights his sister, Lucia, into believing her lover, Edgardo, penniless and a sworn political enemy, has abandoned her. Successfully gaslit, Enrico manipulates Lucia into marrying the rich...
“A boy of peculiar grace”. Experience Jazz musician, Terence Blanchard’s opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, for the first time and that phrase will live with you forever. In five simple words and a few bars of haunting, lyrical, music, Blanchard and his librettist,...
John Adams, one of America’s most celebrated living composers, conceived his oratorio/opera, El Niño, as a highly personal work. His way – he is not religious – of seeking to understand what is meant by a miracle. It is to Adams’s credit that his...
Nailed it! Well, maybe not. Pinned it! Floris Visser, mould-breaking opera director, caused a 10ft gigantic silver pin to lower slowly from the flies at an angle of 45° at the end of Act I of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in Copenhagen’s cutting-edge...
“And we descended into Hell”. That is where Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s holocaust opera, The Passenger, takes all who see it. The hell of Auschwitz. Last Sunday’s performance at Teatro Real, Madrid, coincided with the beginning of Holy Week. Palm Sunday....
Yon Dido gets about a bit. 2,750 years ago, hers was a simple one-way journey, a boat trip from Tyre – Lebanon – to Carthage – Tunisia. Come 2024, the fearless queen is totting up the air miles, touring Europe and plonking down a massive carbon footprint. Luxemburg on...
I bought my first Cecilia Bartoli CD in 1988. It was Rossini’s La scala di seta – The silken ladder. The Italian coloratura mezzo-soprano, coming star of stage, disc and cassette, went on, deservedly, to become a legend of the 90’s. Her voice...