Nothing makes me feel better than The Cunning Little Vixen
The opera is life affirming, but also recognizes that life comes to an end.
By Ethel Clutterbuck
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Opera North
Natural fools
Perhaps the conversation about Rigoletto and disability isn’t limited to physical appearance. What if we broaden the scope of what disability in this opera might look like?
Love potion no. 8 1/2
A perfect escape for a city laden with recent layoffs and job cuts coming into Holiday season
Leveling up or leveling down?
Arts Council England, as a global policy trendsetter, may have sounded the death knell for the international opera industry as we know it.
“Oh, thoughtless crew! Ye know not what ye do!”
One wonders whether an obsession with metrics and measurement has the potential to create arts organizations that are more preoccupied with finding systems that quickly and efficiently tick the Arts Council’s boxes than with creating meaningful, impactful art.
Queen’s evidence
Trove Thursday’s belated contribution to last weekend’s Platinum Jubilee is a broadcast from Aldeburgh of Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana with Christine Brewer and Tom Randle as Elizabeth and Essex, an opera which premiered 69 years ago yesterday.
The brew that is true
This is an exuberant, uplifting, and joyous Elisir, and, for once, it was actually laugh-out-loud funny.
A Frabjous Day: The Siege of Calais
The turntable set looks much the same from any angle: gutted concrete tenements and perilous alleys, instantly recognizable as a scene of urban guerrilla mayhem.
Grand, hotel
Sneaking in under the wire during the final week of May were two highpoints of New York’s opera season: the Cleveland Orchestra’s Salome with a stunning Nina Stemme and operamission’s revelatory US stage premiere of a complete edition of Handel’s first opera Almira.
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).