Operissima

Charlotte Valori reviews opera & theatre: in East Anglia and beyond…

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Tag Archives: Iford

Kimonos and karma: Puccini’s Madame Butterfly at Iford

Madame Butterfly enjoys extraordinary popularity today: even people who have never been to an opera in their lives could probably recognise its title. But why? Despite its surface familiarity, it’s…

July 27, 2018 in Opera.

Queen’s dating dilemma: Handel’s Partenope at Iford

Partenope is a perfect comic storm of seduction, jealousy, fidelity and infidelity, gender-bending and downright skulduggery, anchored in the sharp human tension of true love. Many of these tropes are familiar…

July 6, 2018 in Baroque, Opera.

Escape to the country: Bernstein’s Candide at Iford

This whirling, high-energy collaboration between Iford Arts and Opera Della Luna packs every possible punch in a furiously creative evening of constant costume changes, an endlessly reassembling set, and above…

June 1, 2018 in Operetta.

Dark, desperate, magnificent: Handel’s Jephtha, Iford

As Handel wrote Jephtha‘s haunting central chorus, “How dark, O Lord, are thy decrees,” his own sight temporarily failed him, and he had to break off work. Although he would live…

August 3, 2017 in Oratorio.

Embracing anew: A Fairy Queen at Iford

Director Timothy Nelson has created a new performing edition of Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen for Iford, which picks out the most familiar scenes and divides them into four “Nights” (the Mechanicals’ rehearsal, Oberon…

July 26, 2016 in New writing.

Jungle drums beating true: Mozart’s Magic Flute at Iford

Director John Savournin has created a lively, accessible and stripped-down Flute for magical Wiltshire garden opera venue Iford which gives the lovers Tamino and Pamina a clear choice between the superstitious tribal culture of…

July 14, 2016 in Opera.

So foul and fair a day: Verdi’s Macbeth at Iford

Macbeth’s turbulent emotions and fierce storms make it ironically ideally suited to an English summer evening, as the clouds gather menacingly overhead (although I managed to stay dry at Iford).…

June 15, 2016 in Opera.

Power-dressed and power hungry: Handel’s Agrippina at Iford

Bruno Ravella has updated the action of Handel’s Agrippina to the consumerist hell of the 1980s, giving us big hair, shoulder pads, cocaine and ruthlessness in spades. Agrippina, immaculately coiffured…

July 28, 2015 in Baroque, Opera.

Getting behind the mask: an intense Un ballo in maschera at Iford

Sung in beautifully clear English, Timothy Nelson’s small-scale production for Iford pulls the audience right inside Verdi’s vortex of emotions which keeps Ballo so gripping from beginning to end. Cricket whites,…

June 9, 2015 in Opera.

Highway to heaven: Opera Della Luna and their Hell’s Angel La Fille du régiment

Jeff Clarke’s marvellous retelling of La Fille du régiment updates Donizetti’s original setting (the Swiss Tyrol in the early 19th century) to the hot, dusty Californian desert of the 1950s,…

July 9, 2014 in Opera.

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