Stravinsky
Striking but not altogether successful: ENB’s Our Voices reviewed
Aaron S. Watkin, an affable bearded Canadian, is the new artistic director of English National Ballet. He arrives from Dresden,…
The lonely genius of Bronislava Nijinska
Bronislava Nijinska was constantly undermined in her lifetime – most cruelly by her brother, says Sarah Crompton
Deserves to become an ENO staple: The Cunning Little Vixen reviewed
Spoiler alert. The last words in Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen come from a child playing a frog. The story…
Hockney’s Rake’s Progress remains one of the supreme achievements
With Glyndebourne’s The Rake’s Progress, the show starts with David Hockney’s front cloth. The colour, the ingenuity, the visual bravura:…
Why we love requiems
Alexandra Coghlan on the enduring appeal of requiems
Opera North’s Rite of Spring shows the advantages of confining the music to the pit
It was Stravinsky himself who suggested that, in order to preserve its difficulty, the opening bassoon solo of The Rite…
Beauty and the beast
I was going to start with a little moan. About the shouty marketing, the digital diarrhoea, the sycophantic drivel, which,…
Mistaken identity
This year’s Lucerne Festival is given its identity by having as its theme ‘Identity’. Since the word doesn’t mean anything,…
Not a repertory piece but in its dignity it earns respect: Royal Opera’s Oedipe reviewed
For years I have been telling people that they should listen to, in the absence of staged performances, Enescu’s opera…
Millepied’s final spring programme for the Paris Opera Ballet is brazenly American
Paris Opera Ballet plays hard to get. It doesn’t deign to travel all the way over here, thanks to a…
Spare us this unanimous chorus of praise for Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez, who died last week at the age of 90, would have been the last person, one hopes, to…
Can this year’s Gesualdo celebrations be about the music rather than the blood and gore?
The allure of Carlo Gesualdo, eighth Count of Conza and third Prince of Venosa, has been felt by music-lovers from…
Opera in Edinburgh: even the best Stravinsky can’t beat mediocre Mozart
Is Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress anything more than an exercise in style? ‘I will lace each aria into a tight…
Royal Opera's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny review: far too well behaved
Brecht/Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny was premièred in 1930, Auden/Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress in 1951. Twenty-one…
How Claudio Abbado bridged old and new
Not long ago the great conductors of classical music were general practitioners. They expected to give satisfactory interpretations of music…
A century before Miley Cyrus, it was male performers — like Nijinsky — who bared all
While the airwaves resonate with celebrations of Britten’s birth, I cannot help thinking that what was happening in Paris at…
