Over the past generation, the polymathic conductor Leon Botstein has done much to promote large and obscure late-Romantic works. A recent sold-out performance of Arnold Schonberg’s Gurre-Lieder at Carnegie Hall attests to the devoted following he and the American Symphony Orchestra, which he has led since 1992, enjoy around New York. In an engaging pre-concert talk, Botstein portrayed Schoenberg’s life as a tragedy. Like so many Weimar-era Jews, he sought to embrace German culture, only to be cast out when the country turned to Hitler. So, Botstein concluded, the Romantic excess of Gurre-Liede ..read more

Life can sometimes imitate art and in the case of this concert performance of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung that has certainly been so. Originally scheduled for 2021, at the end of Vladimir Jurowski’s 15-year tenure at the London Philharmonic Orchestra before he went off to Munich, it coincided with the beginning of the pandemic. Almost exactly three years later, their Der Ring des Nibelungen is now complete – but with the destinies of both worlds in an unquestionably different place than when this performance was originally planned.  It was sometimes hard to come to the conclusion at the end ..read more

Judging by a revelatory all-Mendelssohn concert recently heard at the Anvil, Basingstoke with Sir András Schiff and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, I had every reason to assume these performances at the Queen Elizabeth Hall would be equally exciting. But this outing – the final event in a mini-series featuring all five symphonies, the two piano concertos and the Violin Concerto – was a very mixed affair. Indeed, to borrow football parlance, it was a game of two halves: from a truly remarkable performance of the Violin Concerto, flawlessly shaped by Alina Ibragimova, there followed a ..read more

An evening of bracing 20th-century rules-out-the-window music-drama is always a good thing now and again, and the current production of a double bill – Bohuslav Martinů’s Larmes de Couteau and John Harbison’s Full Moon in March – at the Linbury not only serves as a palate-cleanser, but gives one a chance to see a couple of rarely performed works. In the case of Martinů’s short opera, this makes a pleasing addition to the decennial celebrations of ‘The Year of Czech Music’, the composer often being the neglected member of ‘The Big Four’. The librettist of Larmes de Couteau (‘Knife Tears’) was G ..read more

It is, I think, worth quoting the first paragraph of the booklet notes for the section on Francis Poulenc’s Gloria, the second work on this BBC Symphony Orchestra concert: ‘I heard something so unlike me that my legs almost failed me on the staircase. Excellent choir but…all those worthy Protestants were singing sharp and shrill (especially the women) as they do in London, with that “Oh! My good Lord!” quality. A well-intentioned lady was singing the part of Addison [the soprano Adele Addison who was to sing at the world premiere] with a voice like a goat and all out of tune. I tell you I wan ..read more

Aida, an opera that requires at least five fine Verdi voices, has fallen on hard times. Still, the cast announced for last Saturday’s performance at the Bayerische Staatsoper, headed by tenor Jonas Kaufmann, seemed promising. Decades into a magnificent career, Kaufmann’s Radamès remains an impressive achievement. On the night I attended, to be sure, he seemed to husband his vocal resources carefully through the first two acts, singing without much of the tenorial squillo (penetrating metallic ring) normally expected in this role. Through the last act, he crooned—a tendency to which he sticks s ..read more

With an internationally renowned jury, the London Handel Festival International Singing Competition carries a fair amount of clout. Jurors were: David Gowland (chairman, Artistic Director of the Jette Parker Scheme at Covent Garden); Sonia Prina (not ‘Pria’ as the handout suggested, a turbo-charged singer who herself offers a unique energy in Baroque music), Samir Savant (chief executive of St George’s, Bristol), Anna Dennis (soprano) and John McMunn (former tenor, now Chief Executive of the Academy of Ancient Music). Holding the competition in Handel’s own church, of course, adds an extra lay ..read more

The periodic frustration one might feel with Katie Mitchell’s split stage concept for Donizetti’s romantic tragedy is a small price to pay for some stupendous singing. First unveiled in 2016, and now staged under revival director Robin Tebbutt, this gothic tale of feuding families based on Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 novel has an outstanding cast that will surely silence the naysayers of Vicki Mortimer’s distractingly divided set. With its central partition, one’s attention is continually torn between bedroom or billiard room, crypt or closet, an initially unsettling visual experience where vital ..read more

This is not the London Handel Festival’s first stab at Handel’s unjustly neglected opera, Arianna in Creta; it was previously staged at the Royal College of Music in March 2014. Here, it was heard in concert performance, with the church space used to good effect (and with characters occasionally having to sprint from the front, round the back and up the sides to the ‘holding benches’ behind the orchestra). Placement was carefully managed: the harpsichords even separated characters for dramatic effect at times. As is often the way of these things, there was a last-minute substitution in the cas ..read more

The opening reception of the Biennale had ended early, Teatro La Fenice was dark, and I found myself with an unexpectedly free evening in Venice. Musica a Palazzo is one of many companies devoted to presenting small-scale classical music concerts in romantic locations, largely for tourists and often with free prosecco at intermission. I generally shy away from such spectacles—as do, I imagine, many readers of Opera Today—and the prospect of hearing Verdi’s La Traviata performed by an unnamed cast suspiciously billed as “Traveling Opera” did not inspire confidence. The promise of a palazzo, how ..read more