The Royal College of Music, with an enthusiastic and talented student cast, gave Giove in Argo a dramatic rebirth at the Britten Theatre. It was impossible not to enjoy the sheer musicality and talent before us, and John H. Roberts has put together an exquisite confection of sounds to indulge the Handel fan, who will have…
Like buses, you can wait many years to see a pasticcio, and then several come at once. Having only just reviewed the marvellous L’oracolo in Messenia by Vivaldi, I was next invited to Opera Settecento‘s Handel Catone in Utica, a pasticcio which had not been performed anywhere in the world for 283 years, in the…
The English Concert play beautifully, the chorus is in superb voice, but a disjointed cast of unconvincing singers mean Hercules never reaches heroic heights. Adapting Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, Handel’s librettist Thomas Broughton decided to tidy up the hero’s character for the 18th century, turning him into a virtuous husband. Apart from producing an immediate structural…
Like a vast, bejewelled procession through the streets of a Baroque city, L’oracolo in Messenia moves slowly, but constantly fascinates, glittering with vocal ornament and glowing with emotions: rage, lust, greed, aggression, idealism and love, all underscored by some of the most demanding coloratura I have ever heard. Indeed, from a stately, even slow start, this…
A consciously courtly entertainment, Platée balances on the precarious premise that, if the gods can be allowed to laugh at mortals, so a sense of humour can be a divine attribute, even a royal one. As it saw Rameau soon established as composer of the King’s Chamber Music, the joke cannot have gone down too badly.…
Ottone was a great success for Handel in his lifetime, and the ravishing beauty of its music and exciting, dynamic plot shows us why. The consistently high production values of English Touring Opera, who make opera always beautiful but relevantly so, without facile aestheticism, breathe glorious life into Ottone, with a wonderful set, stunning costumes…
A bright Alpine vision of fresh air, blue skies and snowy mountains: Bampton Classical Opera’s production of Gluck’s Il Parnaso Confuso, designed and directed by Jeremy Gray, moves Mount Parnassus closer to Austria than Greece, with the Muses in dirndls, Apollo in lederhosen, and an alphorn on stage. Bertoni’s Orfeo, setting the same libretto Calzabigi wrote…
Closing your eyes while listening, you could easily imagine yourself in a gilt-edged salon, with Her Highness Mademoiselle Marie de Lorraine, Duchess of Guise, peer of France, princess of Joinville, hereditary seneschal of Champagne herself sitting not far from you, enjoying and approving every lovely note. Composed by Charpentier for Mlle de Guise’s court towards…
Five hours with five counter tenors: a virtuoso stand-off which impresses, even astounds, but ultimately exhausts even the most dedicated audience by its refusal to cut a single note of what becomes a very long, florid opera by Jommelli. I promise my review is not similarly long!!! Click here to read it on Bachtrack.
In 1701, Daniel Purcell wrote his Judgement of Paris for a competition to encourage the development of English opera, created by Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax and his friends. Purcell’s entry came an inglorious third and has been largely neglected ever since. But in the rescuing hands of Spiritato!, the Rodolfus Choir and a strong team…