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2024-03-29
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2024-01-01 11:16:00
A time to look back
The late Keel Watson as Wotan in Wagner's Die Walküre with Regents Opera in 2023 (Photo: Steve GregsonNew Year is always a time to look back and remember. 2023 saw us publishing 627 articles, from our review of the Dunedin Consort's 2022 New Year's Eve concert at Wigmore Hall to our note about Adam Whitmore and Phoenix Consort's crowdfunding for their debut disc of music by Alex Campkin. A total of 70 opera reviews, over 80 concert reviews, and over 40 interviews. You can explore further in our recently updated archives of live reviews, record reviews, and interviews.Overseas events that we covered included Le piano symphonique festival in Lucerne, Britten's Peter Grimes in Paris, Handel's Saul at the Komische Oper Berlin, Christoph Loy's production of Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini at Deutsche Oper Berlin, Carmen at Oper im Steinbruch in Austria, the launch of the Dresden Music Festival's historically informed Ring cycle with […]
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 […]
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2023-12-19 16:22:40
Locke’s List for 2023: Notable Operatic Recordings Plus
[…] for best opera recording of the year) and Robert le diable (1831) by the aforementioned Meyerbeer. The generally superb cast in Robert includes Erin Morley and John Osborn, both of whom are widely loved thanks to their frequent performances at the Met. Since 1900: The other operas that I had a chance to review and that impressed me particularly were all composed in the twentieth century or later. The first-ever recording (1960) of Carl Nielsen’s Saul and David (1902) was re-released, coupled with a fascinating work by Helge Bonnén (whose dates are 1896-1983) for actors and orchestra: poems from Edgar Lee Masters’s famous Spoon River Anthology, spoken while the orchestra plays an interpretive underscore! The reemergence of lost or forgotten works by Kurt Weill continues with the (belated) release of a 1998 recording of Propheten, a cantata (i.e., unstaged) version of the stirring final act that got cut before the […]
2023-10-23 07:12:00
A little bit crazy yet done with verve, imagination and style: The Masque of Might, David Pountney's Purcellian masque at Opera North
[…] Dennis' Elena.Purcell & Pountney: The Masque of Might - Anna Dennis - Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)Part Two was longer and more diffuse. The fight against Diktat began, led by Matthew Brook's Sceptic. The forces of nature rose against Diktat and he had a strange dream encounter in a wood with two animals, James Laing and Andri Björn Róbertsson. Increasingly desperate Diktat consulted Seer (Xavier Hetherington) who presented a play to warn Diktat, using Purcell's Saul and the Witch of Endor with Anna Dennis and Matthew Brook. Diktat's powers vanished and order was restored, the celebrations featured dancers as sunflowers with bees to pollinate each other, a fun reference to 17th-century dance, and the Gods reappeared.The second part was, perhaps, too long but the whole had an engaging verve and there was the delight of encountering familiar Purcell in a new guise, alongside the unfamiliar. Very little had been changed, […]
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