by Lucien Jenkins | Mar 9, 2019 | Music
Killer queen The low point in Donizetti’s “Elizabeth and Essex” opera comes when the pit strikes up a version of the National Anthem. The howling anachronism isn’t the problem: the history of opera contains many such, and we tend to cope. The trouble is,...
by Music Editor | Mar 3, 2019 | Music
Grace notes by Robert Thicknesse As with nearly all innovations in 19th-century opera, it was Gioachino Rossini who discovered the obvious truth that Queen Elizabeth I was a born coloratura; handy for Gaetano Donizetti, who later put the queen at the heart of two...
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 Lucien Jenkins | Feb 18, 2019 | Music, Uncategorized
Dancing with Mr D Director David Pountney plays Verdi’s tale of love, death and vendetta with creepily comic touches. Every now and then the chorus get together for a conga line or work coordinated dance steps and hops into their perambulations. This compromises our...
by Lucien Jenkins | Feb 9, 2019 | Music
Emergency exits Leos Janacek’s Kat’a Kabanova, premiered in Brno in 1921, is a brooding piece about adultery and death framed in a plot of older people tyrannising younger ones. Kat’a (normally rendered as Katya), sung by Amanda Majeski, and her husband Tikhon (Andrew...
by Rick Jones | Feb 7, 2019 | Music
Early promise “The isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs” is what Shakespeare actually wrote in The Tempest with reference to the magical island of the play’s setting, although of course it was always taken as Britannia. Perhaps there will be a...
