MONDAY 17TH MAY 2010 DONIZETTI “LA FILLE DU REGIMENT” Royal Opera House Opera is rarely laugh-out-loud funny; nor is it as consistently witty, as stylish, as quirkily captivating as Laurent Pelly’s staging of Donizetti’s Tyrolean romp, first…

WEDNESDAY 12TH MAY 2010 LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/ GERGIEV Barbican Hall One wonders if it was by design or accident that James MacMillan’s new Violin Concerto was programmed here alongside Stravinsky’s Symphony in C? MacMillan seemed to take…

TUESDAY 11TH MAY 2010 ANDSNES/ CHRISTIAN AND TANJA TETZLAFF Wigmore Hall The series is called “Leif Ove Andsnes and Friends” and for the gifted Norwegian pianist that would seem to be as good a basis as any…

THURSDAY 6TH MAY 2010 LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/ DAVIS Barbican Hall Familiarity can and does breed contempt – but never where Haydn and Mozart are concerned. It’s one of music’s enduring miracles that the surprises they spring and…

MONDAY 3RD MAY 2010 ROLANDO VILLAZON/ GABRIELI PLAYERS Royal Festival Hall He’s come through throat surgery and survived From Pop Star to Opera Star (though the jury is still out as to which posed the greater threat)…

WEDNESDAY 28TH APRIL 2010 LONDON PHILHARMONIC/ JUROWSKI Royal Festival Hall Prokofiev and Myaskovsky – firm friends, musical polar opposites. Once again Vladimir Jurowski demonstrates the essence of creative programming bringing us two highly contrasted but musically well-complemented…

TUESDAY 27TH APRIL 2010 VERDI “AIDA” Royal Opera House No candy coloured chiffon, no pyramids, and definitely no turquoise elephants. Zandra Rhodes this was not. And the Covent Garden fashionistas were not happy. But last time I…

SATURDAY 24TH APRIL 2010 HENZE “ELEGY FOR YOUNG LOVERS” English National Opera at the Young Vic At an inn in the Austrian Alps Hilda Mack waits for her husband. 40 years ago he went climbing without, it…

MONDAY 12TH APRIL 2010 RUFUS WAINWRIGHT “PRIMA DONNA” Sadler’s Wells Rufus Wainwright is the past master of “operatic pop”. He writes wonderful and original songs – witty, ironic, insidiously memorable. He might one day write a similarly…

SATURDAY 10TH APRIL 2010 LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA/ NEZET-SEGUIN Royal Festival Hall Fireworks from Handel and Stravinsky but most of all from Yannick Nezet-Seguin in a performance of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony that redefined its rhythmic exuberance in ways…