Present for the future: A Hansel at Snape Maltings
“One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!” George Eliot (in Middlemarch) points us to the social circularity behind a gift: and this Hansel given at Snape was…
Myth illustrated with music: Purcell’s King Arthur at the Aldeburgh Festival
English semi-opera is a strange beast: a story broken up and illustrated by music. Once you settle into it, the shuttling rhythm between music and story is surprisingly and undeniably…
A welcome return: Monteverdi’s Ulysses’ Homecoming, English Touring Opera
Saffron Hall, East Anglia’s brightest new star venue on the classical music horizon, is moving with confidence into direct competition with Snape Maltings. Their first fully staged opera, English Touring Opera’s…
Boy Donne good: Toby Spence in Tippett and Britten III, Aldeburgh Festival
Although his words could have been crisper, all the songs came across with a pleasing sense of flow, Spence’s light lyric tenor happily expanding to the rafters at Snape, when…
Music more than words: Britten and Tippett at the Aldeburgh Festival
Although I had undoubtedly come to Snape that evening solely in order to hear Ian Bostridge sing Britten and Tippett, I left feeling the most astonished, and exhilarated, by Britten’s…
Starting as you mean to go on: Britten’s Les Illuminations at Aldeburgh Festival
Director Struan Leslie’s reimagining of Britten’s Les Illuminations song cycle opened the Aldeburgh Festival with an exciting array of circus performers, creating a dreamy evening without plot, but heady with potent mood,…