Quadrophenia – A Mod Ballet
To say that expectations were running high for this new dance version of the extraordinary 1979 film Quadrophenia would be to understate the atmosphere in the audience before the beginning of the show. Not only […]
Classical Source Reviews
Opera Holland Park 2025 – Lehár’s The Merry Widow – with Paula Sides, Alex Otterburn, Henry Waddington & Rhian Lois; directed by John Savournin; conducted by Anna Castro Grinstein
John Savournin’s production of Lehár’s The Merry Widow (1905) – a score particularly known and loved for its evocation of bittersweet nostalgia and sentiment – moves the action to the notably unsentimental, ungentle context of […]
Lights in the dark – Music of resistance, courage and hope
This was the last concert in the RPO’s ‘Lights in the Dark’ strand, here repurposed to encompass music by composers marginalised by gender expectations and/or issues of race and sexual preference. Some of the claims […]
Faust @ Théâtre national de l’Opéra-Comique, Paris
There are times when the continuing obsession in musical circles for uncovering composers’ first thoughts concerning their works yields diminishing returns, as often, a creator will refine and improve. First is rarely best. That general […]
The Grange Festival 2025 – Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus – with Andrew Hamilton, Sylvia Schwartz & Ben McAteer; directed by Paul Curran; conducted by Paul Daniel
Paul Curran’s production of Johann Strauss’s operetta Die Fledermaus (1874) – composed in the heyday of Habsburg Vienna – brings the action forwards to the 1920s or early ’30s, bearing with it a great deal […]
The Grange Festival 2025 – Verdi’s La traviata – with Samantha Clarke, Nico Darmanin & Dario Solari; directed by Maxine Braham; conducted by Richard Farnes
In essence, the story of the ‘fallen woman’ of Alexandre Dumas’s play (the literary source for Verdi’s opera) is simply a modern, secularised version of the age-old Christian trope of the wayward, sinful woman who […]
The Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall – Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Gabriela Ortiz, Bernstein, Terence Blanchard and Dvořák
The final program in this Met Orchestra season opened with Antrópolis by Gabriel Ortiz, the current holder of the Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall. A ten-minute work inspired by the legendary dance halls and nightclubs […]
Orchestra of St. Luke’s Bach Festival – Bach and Mozart with Angela Hewitt
The evening began with an engrossing account of Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in G-minor, powerful on a modern piano, especially as interpreted by Hewitt on her brilliantly toned, four-pedal Fazioli. She played throughout with crystalline articulation and […]
Longborough Festival 2025 – Rossini’s The Barber of Seville – with Henry Neill, Joseph Doody, Lauren Young & Benjamin Bevan; directed by Louise Bakker; conducted by Elaine Kelly
Like its operatic sibling The Marriage of Figaro, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville is so perfectly formed a comedy that it almost directs itself and a good performance is virtually guaranteed. But such is its […]
New York Philharmonic – Sarah Hicks conducts John Williams’s score for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
The Philharmonic wound up this season’s ‘The Art of the Score’ series performing alongside an HD presentation of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, the second installment in the original Star Wars trilogy. Set three […]
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