Britten
Barbara Hannigan needs to stop conducting while singing
Last week, Barbara Hannigan conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in Haydn, Roussel, Ravel and Britten, though to be honest she…
A lively and imaginative interpretation of an indestructible Britten opera
Scottish Opera’s new production of Albert Herring updates the action to 1990, and hey – remember 1990? No, not particularly,…
Away with the fairies
Scottish Opera’s new production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems to open in midwinter. Snow falls, fairies hurl snowballs…
Mourning glory
Alexandra Coghlan on the enduring appeal of requiems
Handsome and revivable but I wasn’t moved: Royal Opera’s Death in Venice reviewed
Premièred within two years of each other, Luchino Visconti’s film and Benjamin Britten’s opera Death in Venice both take Thomas…
An abdication of interpretative responsibility: Royal Opera’s Billy Budd reviewed
The climactic central scene of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd ends unexpectedly. The naval court has reached a verdict of death,…
Britten’s War Requiem almost sounded like a masterpiece – but it’s isn’t, is it?
‘What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?’ We’ve heard a lot, lately, of the knell that tolls through the…
Opera North’s Tosca will leave you quivering
At the end of Act Two of Tosca there are some 30 bars of orchestral music — accompaniment to a…
More than ever, this was Ulysses’ show: Royal Opera’s Return of Ulysses reviewed
Spoiler alert: the final image of John Fulljames’s production of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses at the Roundhouse is haunting.…
Shaw hand
When is a rape not a rape? It’s an unsettling question — far more so than anything offered up by…
Mistress of modernism
What classical music really needs is more performers like Barbara Hannigan. Philip Clark meets theself-conducting soprano
Screwed up
We all know that ‘They fuck you up your mum and dad’, but nowhere is this more reliably (and violently)…
Diary
You have to hand it to Supermac. Fifty years after the event, he is still running rings round them. The…
Great Britten
Of this year’s three musical birthday boys, Wagner has fared, in England, surprisingly well, Verdi inexplicably badly, and Britten, as…
On the beach
With a tidal wave of Peter Grimeses about to engulf us — performances in London, Birmingham and Leeds in September…
The anniversary addiction
Centenaries now seem to be the only reason that publishers and concert planners do anything at all
