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Past Production Reviews

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Marnie, Muhly
D: Michael Mayer
C: Martyn Brabbins
World Premiere
Left wanting more: ENO's Marnie

This weekend I saw the ENO’s production of Nico Muhly’s Marnie. Based on a novel by Winston Graham which later became a Hitchcock film, the story is full of suspense and drama. Visually beautiful and very cleverly staged, using moving set pieces and projections to provide film-like transitions between scenes, the production was rich to look at, full of eye-catching tableaus and scenes. The costuming was very effective as well, particularly on Marnie herself and her quartet of Shadow Marnies who followed her throughout the show.

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27 November 2017www.schmopera.comVivian Darkbloom
Création mondiale de Marnie au London Coliseum

La version lyrique de Nico Muhly, coproduction entre l’English National Opera et le Metropolitan Opera de New York, est plus compatissante envers Marnie que le film, et se rapproche davantage du livre original. La voleuse est ici victime, et affirme que nous, êtres humains, incarnons constamment des personnages distincts selon notre environnement. La mise en scène entoure donc la protagoniste de quatre « ombres » (Charlotte Beament, Katie Coventry, Emma Kerr and Katie Stevenson), qui révèlent plusieurs facettes de sa personnalité. Quatre danseurs en costumes de bureau apparaissent à intervalles réguliers dans des chorégraphies très saccadées, pour représenter l’emprise masculine et les forces qui se jouent contre elle. Au cours d’une croisière, ils se placent autour de son lit et rappellent les « hommes aux costumes gris » dont la Princesse Diana parlait régulièrement.

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23 November 2017www.opera-online.comSam Smith
Hänsel und Gretel, Humperdinck
D: Timothy Sheader
C: Ben Glassberg
An enchanting Hansel and Gretel at Regent's Park Theatre

Indeed, Lizzi Gee’s movement direction is superb. The children’s rough-and-tumble antics; the dream sequence, in which the children really do ‘take flight’ into fantasy; the delicate dancing of the en pointe duplicates of the dazzling Dew Fairy (He Wu), with their ‘milk-bottles’ of dew droplets; the reawakening of the lost children and the final chorus in celebration of this miracle: all are brilliantly conceived and executed. And, the choreography provides the production with a judicious moment of tongue-in-cheek kitsch. Reunited with his toy aeroplane by the sympathetic Sandman (Gillian Keith), the sleeping Hansel’s imagination powers a ‘lift-off’ to paradise. A bleached-blond flight crew arrive, smiles beaming and uniforms spic-and-span, and semaphore their pre-flight briefing before the excited children soar into the air on the surging wave of Humperdinck’s score, to be greeted by their parents bearing the balloons that will float them to wonderland. It’s terrifically well done.

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19 June 2019www.operatoday.comClaire Seymour
Opera Review: Hansel and Gretel at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre

Rachel Kelly and Susanna sang the roles of Hansel and Gretel in fine style, acting the childish roles with mischievous enthusiasm, but the real comic star of the piece was Alasdair Elliott as the witch, appearing first in a dress and luxurious blonde wig, but later revealing himself as a bald male, which I suppose makes him a warlock rather than a witch.

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20 June 2019www.express.co.ukWilliam Harston
Madama Butterfly, Puccini
D: Anthony MinghellaGlen Sheppard
C: Martyn BrabbinsMartin Fitzpatrick
Pulling the heart strings: Madam Butterfly returns to ENO

The prospect of Natalya Romaniw making her role debut as Cio-Cio-san at English National Opera has given the latest revival of Anthony Minghella’s 2005 production of Madam Butterfly an added flutter. The Welsh soprano has been building an impressive career in bringing opera’s tragic women to life in a startlingly vivid way; the uniquely awful story of the heart-broken Japanese girl who commits ritual suicide – albeit inauthentically – was always likely to be movingly depicted in Romaniw’s hands and indeed this was an absolute triumph.

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28 February 2020bachtrack.comDominic Lowe
PROUD TO SUPPORT UKRAINIANS FIND OUT HOW WE'RE HELPING Opera review: Madam Butterfly at the English National Opera

This is the third or fourth time I have seen Anthony Minghella's stunningly gorgeous production of Puccini's Madam Butterfly at the London Coliseum and in many ways it is the best. Revival director Glen Sheppard has made some delightful tweaks that make Minghella's vision even more effective and the title role is sung by Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw in gloriously impressive style.

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06 April 2020www.express.co.ukWilliam Hartson
Le nozze di Figaro, Mozart
D: David McVicar
C: Joana Mallwitz
Rising stars have a crazy day: Figaro returns to Covent Garden

Count Almaviva was well taken by Argentinean Germán E Alcántara (...)in his first major role here, showed vocal and histrionic gifts. In the Act 2 altercation with the Countess his violent side was visibly and vocally only just in check, an aristocrat aware he is losing control of events.

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10 January 2022bachtrack.comRoy Westbrook
Le nozze di Figaro, Mozart
D: David McVicar
C: Christopher Willis
Le nozze di Figaro (Royal Opera House)

Anita Hartig and Ellie Dehn share similar voice types, which makes their fourth-act shenanigans when Susanna and the Countess swap identities more convincing than usual. Each has a feather-light timbre – indeed, there were moments in "Dove sono" when Dehn's could have done with guy ropes to weigh it down – and they bring such airiness to their big duet, "Sull'aria", that they all but waft away on the breeze. The scene stealer in this revival is Heather Engebretson as Barbarina, who peeps in like a schoolgirl then pipes up like a diva. The young American is a name to watch and a perfect partner for Kate Lindsey's gangling, hopelessly priapic Cherubino. Of the opera's other comic roles, the great mezzo Ann Murray is on her best vinegary form as Marcellina, but the Bartolo and Basilio of Carlo Lepore and Krystian Adam are a touch under-characterised. Ivor Bolton conducts a ROH Orchestra composed of stay-at-homes from the company's Japanese tour, no doubt bolstered by deps, but the standard is as high as one would expect of a band bearing the house name. Despite some fastish tempo choices, matters are mostly (but not invariably) secure between pit and stage, so Mozart carries the day and bliss is king.

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16 September 2015www.whatsonstage.comMark Valencia
Der Rosenkavalier, Strauss
D: Robert Carsen
C: Andris Nelsons
Der Rosenkavalier

In London, Fleming’s colleagues were less consistently good than Fleming herself. Reiffenstuel’s dresses for Alice Coote’s Octavian and Mariandel were not the most becoming the mezzo-soprano has worn on this stage, where she has thus far specialized in male characters. Coote’s singing was often ungainly, frequently with a discomfiting rawness to the tone. The finest exponent of the three main women’s parts was Sophie Bevan, who sang the ingenue role of her namesake to perfection, with a top register to die for.Steinberg’s family-sized sets looked too big on the Covent Garden stage; the Princess’s bedroom and its mammoth collection of dynastic paintings dwarfed the characters. A troublesome feature of Act II was a collection of enormous field guns and an obsession with rifles: in his desire to underline the militarism of his redesignated period, Carsen decided, without any specifics in Hofmannsthal’s text to back it up, that the army supplies that provide the basis of Faninal’s fortune were, in fact, armaments. Act III swapped the original’s dubious suburban inn for a palatial, populous brothel, where Ochs’s assignation with Mariandel almost got lost in the wider sweep of hedonistic goings-on. Overall, Carsen’s direction lacked the detail and focus that can make Der Rosenkavalier profoundly moving. Supplying some, at least, of the missing magic was the conducting of Andris Nelsons, whose enthusiasm for Strauss has already resulted in persuasive Covent Garden performances of Salome and Elektra. Once again his ability to balance super-enriched textures and provide dramatic momentum in a score that needs to be kept on the move paid rich dividends. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House responded keenly to his confident direction.

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17 December 2016www.operanews.comGeorge Hall

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