Garsington Opera at Wormsley has achieved some sort of artistic milestone with a near-perfect new production of Benjamin Britten’s Death in Venice. Based on the richly autobiographical novella by Thomas Mann, converted into a spare libretto by Myfanwy Piper (whose painter husband, John Piper did the original 1973 sets), the opera is a curiosity, with only one major singing role – but … [Read more...]
Archives for June 2015
Too Much Greek Love?
In three hours and forty minutes precisely, Robert Icke’s new version of Aeschylus’ three tragedies that constitute the Oresteia, unfolds on the stage of the Almeida Theatre in North London. The “precisely” is important, because Icke has also directed the highly compressed production, and he plays on our own sense of time and urgency. Digital clocks tell the time – to the minute – of the deaths of … [Read more...]
Bayreuth in Your Own Backyard
Longborough Festival Opera is Bayreuth in the Cotswolds, our almost-local 500 seat auditorium, converted from a giant chicken shed, with the seats bought second-hand from Covent Garden. Its founders, Martin and Lizzie Graham, built this mini-Bayreuth in their own backyard with the inspired-lunatic idea of staging Wagner’s operas in the correct grand style, but on an intimate scale. They built a … [Read more...]
Best restaurant in the world? Says who?
Would any critic dare to try to name the 50 best operas/singers/actors, artists in the world, except as some sort of perverse game? The concept of the World’s 50 (or 100 or 1000) Best Restaurants is obviously a dodgy one. Who decides who’s on the list? What qualifies them to judge the question? And are the procedures they use transparent? The list for 2015 has just been published. It contains the … [Read more...]