by Lucien Jenkins | Mar 6, 2022 | Music
WNO’s latest staging of Katie Mitchell’s staging of Jenůfa (revived by director Eloise Lally) is given an additional layer of significance by current events. Janáček’s is an opera in a Slav language, in a production with various Slav participants, chronicling... 
by Lucien Jenkins | Nov 23, 2021 | Music
The question of when and where to set Wagner’s Ring is an entirely open one, since like Arthur and Lear, it is everywhere and nowhere. Richard Jones (director) and Stewart Laing (set and costume designer) answer this by locating Act 1 of Valkyrie in a Wickes shed, Act... 
by Lucien Jenkins | Oct 8, 2021 | Music
The Royal Opera’s new Rigoletto has the casting is just right. Lisette Oropesa’s Gilda (who shares the role with Rosa Feola) manages the difficult balance between the coloratura writing of the part and the youthful innocence of the role. After all, she mustn’t be... 
by Lucien Jenkins | Sep 29, 2021 | Music
Photo by Richard Hubert Smith Puccini could almost have written Madama Butterfly after hearing an appeal at a conference on intersectionality for material to support a new module, with its tragic tale of a woman misused by a man, a confrontation between a more- and a... 
by Lucien Jenkins | Feb 10, 2020 | Music
Welsh National Opera’s new (to the UK – it first saw the light of day last spring in Bonn) show is a visual triumph. The costumes (Marie-Jeanne Lecca) and set (Raimund Bauer) are arresting. The latter is a series of frames, so the characters seem to be stepping in and... 