by Music Editor | May 9, 2019 | Music
Bad trips down Memory Lane by Robert Thicknesse Opera in Britain can feel pretty peripheral, never more so than when you catch one of these classic productions that do the rounds of mainland Europe. It feels like conversation we are not part of – and, indeed, the idea...
by Amanda Holloway | May 1, 2019 | Awards, Music
At the end of a thrilling performance of her new song cycle, Kate Whitley received the 2018 Critics’ Circle Award for Emerging Talent: Composer. Her Six Charlotte Mew Settings were sung by two outstanding British artists, bass Matthew Rose and soprano Katherine...
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 Rick Jones | Apr 9, 2019 | Music, Uncategorized
The dark, dank streets and tenements of London’s notorious borough of Whitechapel in 1888 are powerfully captured by English National Opera’s production of Jack the Ripper. Composer Iain Bell has created a rich and sumptuous score with a Romantic flavour in the...
by Mark Pullinger | Apr 4, 2019 | Music
In February, the Music Section presented two of its Critics’ Circle Awards. At the Hackney Empire, Mark Valencia was on hand to do the honours, presenting soprano Jennifer France her award after her incredible performance for Scottish Opera in Stuart MacRae’s new...
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...
