by Tom Sutcliffe | Apr 25, 2019 | Music
Billy Budd is Britten’s second opera for his beloved tenor partner, and the Royal Opera got one thing right for this somewhat dubious new production by Deborah Warner: namely Toby Spence in Peter Pears’s role, Edward Fairfax Vere, captain of HMS Indomitable....
by Tom Sutcliffe | Mar 22, 2019 | Music
Misfortune cookies The Royal Opera has sold this production expensively and successfully not because of the work itself, however interesting (and it really is), but because of Anna Netrebko and Jonas Kaufmann as Leonora and Alvaro. Nobody likes Christof Loy’s muddled...
by Tom Sutcliffe | Mar 3, 2019 | Music
PISS POOR Franz Lehár’s operetta, newly staged at the Coliseum by English National Opera, looks sort of traditionally Edwardian – except for the slinky contemporary ballgown worn by Sarah Tynan in the title role of Hanna Glawari, as up-to-the-minute as the MeToo...
by Tom Sutcliffe | Feb 2, 2019 | Music
Destination unknown Tell it not in Gath – but Mozart’s Magic Flute is politically too incorrect in this #MeToo era. Among many cuts in Opera North’s new production, no animals get charmed by the magic of Tamino’s flute on his mission to rescue Pamina, and of course...
by Tom Sutcliffe | Jan 30, 2018 | Music
Return in the round By Tom Sutcliffe Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse was wonderfully entertaining in Peter Hall’s classic Glyndebourne production of Raymond Leppard’s orchestrated edition 44 years ago starring Janet Baker and Ben Luxon. But Monteverdi operas need...
