“Billy Budd”, Glyndebourne Festival Opera (Review)
“This is not his trial, it is mine”, says Captain Fairfax Vere as he sees the inevitability of Billy Budd’s condemnation. “My heart’s broken, my life’s broken”, he concludes, and by having him bear witness to Billy’s…
Briefly… Falstaff, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
It’s a world of girl guides, animatronic cats, and cabbages. Ford’s garden apparently yields nothing else. And whilst the flat surfaces and wonky perspectives of designer Ultz’ sets aren’t too prepossessing in themselves they serve the child…
Ariadne auf Naxos, Glyndebourne (Review)
The Major-Domo promises fireworks during the Prologue of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Katharina Thoma, the director of Glyndebourne’s new staging, drops a bombshell – actually several bombshells. Glyndebourne’s wartime history – as a refuge for…
Mozart “Le nozze di Figaro”, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
It’s the age of long hair and raging hormones, wide lapels and wider collars, the age of new found “permissiveness” where the world and his dog are gagging for some extra-curricular congress and the great and good…
Puccini “La Boheme”, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
More Basildon than Bastille, David McVicar’s grungy staging of La Boheme heralded the new millennium amidst concrete and steel, fire hazards and fire escapes, chavs and chav nots, bringing our “bohemians” into the here and now with…
Janacek “The Cunning Little Vixen”, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
It might be deduced that the only thing worse than working with children and animals would be working with children as animals. But Leos Janacek was unfazed by the old Hollywood adage and his cartoon-strip derived opera…
Handel “Rinaldo”, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
It’s the second school “outing” of the season. First Christopher Alden took Britten back to visit his past in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at ENO and now Robert Carsen is playing schoolboy heroics and fantasy football with…
Wagner “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Some pieces you just have to trust and trust implicitly. When a text is as good as Wagner’s Die Meistersinger it’s a wise director who takes a step back and let the words, the characters, the bountiful…