Kaufmann and Gheorghiu were not the only star attractions of this early and clearly expensive Christmas gift from the Royal Opera. Cilea’s Frenchified melodrama hasn’t been seen in the house since 1906 and the dusty wing space…
The trick with Debussy’s Prélude à l’aprés midi d’un faune is to make the whole piece sound as free as the celebrated flute solo which awakens it. Tugan Sokhiev almost brought it off. Here is a conductor…
You couldn’t make it up: the water supply fails at the South Bank on the day they’re performing Singin’ in the Rain. I guess you call that a dry-run. At any rate it was the first ever…
In one respect at least Rufus Norris’ new ENO production of Don Giovanni might truthfully be described as electrifying. They are tinkering with the circuits before a single note has been sounded. “They” are the Don’s devilish…
Where has this idea come from that Kurt Weill somehow lost his edge or worse yet sold out when he headed Stateside? Have the people who perpetrate this nonsense actually heard the Broadway shows? The diversity of…
Jonas Kaufmann confounds our expectations on so many levels. His is a lyric tenor with a dark, grainy, dramatic core enabling a disarmingly wide range of French, Italian, and German repertoire in all its sensitivities. In his…
Stephen Sondheim has called it “The first really good experimental show” – and he should know. He was a gofer on the short-lived original production in 1947 and, for old times sake and because Sondheim has always…
Vladimir Jurowski had pointedly opted for an orchestra of modest proportions for this evening of Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Mahler, and the lay-out of the London Philharmonic Orchestra with woodwinds, brasses, and basses tiered at the centre of…