Arthur Sullivan News
English composer of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo (1842-1900)
- organ, piano, pipe organ
- opera, incidental music, song, symphony, ballet, cantata, oratorio
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
- composer, organist, conductor, music teacher
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Last update
2024-03-13
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2024-02-29 12:31:30
[…] lifetime of wit, wisdom and theatrical audacity distilled in this inventive peach of a show.Ditching the masonic mumbo-jumbo and gussying up the dialogue, McBurney has you laughing out loud. A dozen actors, their movement beautifully choreographed, bustle around without ever pulling focus; singers inhabit the auditorium without it feeling gratuitous. There’s aerial wizardry, tiny shadow puppets, some inventive and immaculately coordinated live video (Ben Thompson) and equally ingenious deployment of an onstage foley artist (Ruth Sullivan).
2024-02-13 08:15:00
Pierre Loti's writings inspired Léo Delibes' opera Lakmé and a whole genre of Orientalist operas
[…] thanks to his travels as a naval officer, broadened the audience.This fascination for all things exotic would come to a logical (and horrifying) conclusion when the exotic was brought back to the West in the form of live people. And the musical influences continued as well. The Japanese Village in Knightsbridge (which ran from 1885 to 1887) and involved 100 Japanese men and women living in a specially constructed village, may have influenced Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado. Whilst in 1889, at the Paris Exposition Universelle, colonised people had their daily lives displayed for visitors, giving Debussy his first experience of the Balinese Gamelan.Léo Delibes' Lakmé, however, has another layer of exoticism too in the form of the the novelty of exotically colonial English people and it is hero Gérald's desire to put country and duty above love that give the opera one of its engines.Whilst the music from the opera remains well known, […]
2024-02-02 10:19:00
As chilling and emotional as ever: Kate Lindsey returns as Offred in ENO's strong revival of Poul Ruders' The Handmaid's Tale
[…] Susan Bickley as Offred's Mother and John Findon as Luke, Offred's husband. A big mention here to the poignant, and incredibly poised, performance from Elspeth McDonald as Luke and Offred's daughter (doubling with Francesca Ditchburn). More 'blink and you miss them' roles, important in the ensemble but without much time in the spotlight, were Annabella-Vesela Ellis as New Offglen, Alan Oke as the Doctor, Helen Johnson as Moira's aunt, Lydia Marchione as Warren's wife, plus Adam Sullivan, Ronald Naire, Robert Winslade Anderson, Lixin Liu, Amy Kerenza Sedgwick and Sophie Goldrick.Juliet Stevenson was poised and rather moving as Professor Pieixoto, her poignant final envoi to Offred (whose fate remained unknown) emphasising the problem with transporting Margaret Attwood's novel to other genres (opera, television series); Attwood's prose is so wonderful and so luminous, it hardly need amplification in another medium. However Poul Ruders and librettist Paul Bentley make and admirable job of it […]
2023-12-29 08:43:00
2023 in Opera and Music Theatre: historically informed Berlioz & Wagner, dramatic Handel, a G&S rarity, RVW, Zandonai in Berlin, new Jonathan Dove
Purcell & Pountney: The Masque of Might - Andri Björn Róbertsson, Xavier Hetherington, Matthew Brook - Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)One particular highlight this year was Berlioz' Les Troyens at the BBC Proms with Dinis Sousa conducting the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. Wagner was something of an ongoing theme for 2023, including Dresden Music Festival's historically informed Das Rheingold and a remarkable performance of Die Walküre from London Opera Company. Handel masterpieces included Jephtha at Covent Garden with Allan Clayton and Saul at the Komische Oper, Berlin with Luca Tittoto, plus more of a rarity, Arminio, from the Jette Parker Young Artists at Covent Garden.We also caught Allan Clayton in a remarkable reinvention of Britten's Peter Grimes at the Paris Opera. Gilbert & Sullivan also featured with Iolanthe returning to ENO, and a rare revival of Princess Ida from John Wilson and the OAE.New opera included the premiere of Jonathan Dove's […]
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