(Photo credit: Sarah Hickson) Glyndebourne has announced its largest mainstage community opera in its history to take place in February 2025. The amateur singers and instrumentalists will perform alongside professional musicians in the world premiere of Jonathan Dove and April De Angelis’ “Uprising.” Appearing on stage will be a community chorus of 110 singers made up of 60 young people {…}
(Photo credit: Ali Wright) Whatever your views on Puccini, “Tosca” always draws a crowd. In a UK opera landscape mired by cuts and ever-tightening budgets, it is reassuring to see an opera festival that continues to stand on its own two feet, irrespective of Arts Council funding (or perhaps more accurately lack thereof). A full house then, as it was {…}
(Photo: Opera Holland Park 2023 © Craig Fuller) Part of “La bohème’s” appeal is surely in its cinematic quality. Puccini’s score does so much meticulous work that directors sometimes feel that they have little to do other than show the singers to the stage – and ensure they take the right cues from the orchestra. There are sudden close-ups and {…}
(Photo: ©Tristram Kenton) English National Opera haven’t had a live audience in their home at the London Coliseum since March 2020. But they’ve hardly been idle: their costume department made hospital scrubs, they devised a singing program for those suffering with “long COVID,” and performed “Tosca” and “La bohème” in striking outdoor settings. Their 2021-22 season opened last week with {…}
(Credit: Ali Wright) Opera Holland Park’s season opened this week with the quintessential summer opera – a new production by Oliver Platt of W.A. Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte’s “Le nozze di Figaro,” a farce that is still as sparklingly inventive and effervescent as it was over 200 years ago. There is much to praise in this opening artistic salvo {…}
Lockdown has meant more people than ever consuming opera through streams, broadcasts, and archive videos, often from leading houses. It has proved a mixed experience for many. The spectacle of opera, and its broad-brush gestures, can feel boxy on the small screen; so too can its emotional climaxes feel oddly overblown out of a theatrical context. There have been innovative {…}