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2024-03-29
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2024-03-04 07:33:00
Musical strengths, visual confusion & two Rakes: English Touring Opera's new production of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress
[…] underlie Stravinsky's writing and which can sometimes get hidden by the layers of pastiche. Here, Jones and Spiteri managed bring a poignant edge to Tom whilst Nazan Fikret really touched hearts as Anne and Jerome Knox made this Nick Shadow a vibrant person.In the pit, Jack Sheen conducted with discipline and love, giving Stravinsky's score both glitter and emotion, though there were times when he rather too much gave the orchestra their head. Harpsichordist Satoko Doi-Luck was on-stage at all times, playing the harpsichord in 18th-century garb.Stravinsky: The Rake's Progess - Act Three, scene one: the graveyardJerome Knox, Frederick Jones - English Touring Opera (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith)Polly Graham's production had a refreshing lack of pre-conceived ideas and a willingness to explore the work more fully. But the rather scattershot approach seems to need to settle in a bit more, and perhaps when Frederick Jones is returned to full vocal health it […]
2024-01-02 10:48:00
William Christie & Les Arts Florissants celebrate New Year's Eve at Wigmore Hall in fine style with Hugh Cutting & Carlo Vistoli
Antonio CaldaraMonteverdi, Steffani, Fontana, Caldara, Vivaldi, Bononcini, Handel; Hugh Cutting, Carlo Vistoli, Les Arts Florissants, William Christie; Wigmore HallReviewed 31 December 2023One of those evenings where the performers sheer delight in the music carried you away; Les Arts Flo in a delightful sequence of Italian Baroque duets and solo cantatasThe Wigmore Hall ended the year in fine style with a concert of 17th and 18th century Italian duets from Les Arts Florissants. William Christie directed from harpsichord and organ with Emmanuel Resche-Caserta and Augusta McKay Lodge, violins, and Cyril Poulet, cello, with countertenors Hugh Cutting and Carlo Vistoli. The programme included duets by Monteverdi, Agostino Steffani, Giovanni Bononcini, Handel and Vivaldi, along with solo cantatas by Antonio Caldara and Vivaldi, and instrumental music by Giovanni Battista Fontana, Vivaldi and Caldara.We began with one of Monteverdi's Scherzi Musicali, the duet Damigella tutta bella published in 1607, a delightfully perky and distinctly skittish dance. Then came the duet […]
2022-07-17 14:42:47
Baroque gem: Hasse's early serenata gets an intriguing modern staging in Buxton with some stylish singing.
Hasse: Antonio e Cleopatra - Ellie Neate, Thalie Knights - Buxton International Festival (Photo David John King Photography)Johann Hasse: Antonio e Cleopatra: Ellie Neate, Thalie Knights, director: Evangeline Cullingworth, musical director: Satoko Doi Luck, Buxton Festival Baroque Orchestra; Buxton International Festival at the Pavilion Arts CentreReviewed 16 July 2022 (★★★★)A rare outing for Hasse's early serenata in a stylish performance that brings the work right up to dateLike Handel before him, Johann Hasse (some 14 years Handel's junior) left his native Germany to get some Italianate polish. His first major work was the serenata Antonio e Cleopatra, which premiered at the estate of a Royal councillor near Naples in 1725. A serenata requiring just two singers with strings and harpsichord, it was a small-scale piece for an aristocratic entertainment much like Handel's cantata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, written for an aristocratic wedding in Naples in 1708. It was an imaginative idea […]
2022-07-15 15:45:00
Reviews of Buxton International Festival operas 2022
[…] Cleopatra – is what the audience has come to hear. They are top-class young artists, well able to embellish their repeats tastefully, and in Ellie Neate’s case making the most of her frequent bursts of high-powered top notes (originally written for Farinelli). The first-act closing duet, “Un solo sospiro”, verges on the Handelian in its variety of emotive resource and showed the two both at their best. Musical direction from the harpsichord is by Satoko Doi-Luck, with a tireless in-period string quintet beside her. Viva la DivaDonizetti after Sografi, English version by Kit Hesketh-HarveySalzburg State Theatre in association with Buxton International FestivalBuxton Opera House10, 14, 19, 21 and 23 July 2022, 2 hours 55 minutes It’s good to see that Buxton International Festival can laugh at itself. Here we have an adaptation of material originally written to be a comic opera about opera, by Donizetti, turned into a tale of the […]
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