Hints and tips:
...Then he adds a bonus in the form of eight tracks offering further alternative arias for each of the solo singers, including relative rarities....
...Do the arias of Fausto, with their early Romantic-Italian style, suggest a little-known opera by Donizetti? Is the comic patter by Rossini?...
...The role of Semele is nothing short of a gift and Joélle Harvey brings to it period style and a bright voice, skipping about showpiece arias such as “Myself I shall adore” with admirable precision....
...There are spoken introductions to the arias by Abramović on a recording and in accompanying short films....
...Why does Hamor return from war singing a radiantly happy aria when he apparently has a serious case of PTSD?...
...It skips from brassy bombast to melodramatic arias to resonant choruses, working in cheeky homages to Philip Glass, John Williams and more as it goes....
...In a key moment of the act two song contest, Wolfram has a mesmerising aria on love....
...conductor Joana Mallwitz is another plus, though she lacks the extraordinary grip of John Eliot Gardiner in several earlier revivals. ★★★★☆ The 1994 production of La traviata, originally directed by Richard...
...The Norwegian soprano was impressively loud in her Italian arias, soggily conducted, and “Rule, Britannia!”....
...Elizabeth Watts, touching the heart as Aspasia in the opera’s darkest aria, and Soraya Mafi’s Ismene vie with each other for the highest top notes....
...Until February 11; further information here Performance ‘Seventeen’, Southbank Theatre A cast of theatre veterans including Robert Menzies, Fiona Choi and Richard Piper regresses to teenagerdom in this...
...Imagine me in a tight white PVC miniskirt, boots laced up to my knees, a huge wig and covered in fake blood and chocolate body-spread, singing one of the hardest arias I have ever faced, while standing on...
...Carrie-Ann Williams, making her ENO debut, rose impressively to Micaëla’s aria and Nmon Ford brought flair to his suave, smiling Escamillo....
...She says musical theatre has taught her about “where music meets narrative”, how to follow a character in the music, where songs or arias should fall and why. Storytelling is “paramount”....
...Richard Jones’s Royal Opera production offers greater clarity, but is equally hit-and-miss....
...Aigul Khismatullina unleashes top notes of blazing power as Queen of the Night and Brindley Sherratt plumbs the depths of Sarastro’s arias with sonorous gravity....
...The most inspirational arias fall to Irene, a role which finds DiDonato in exceptionally radiant voice....
...Perhaps the happiest exception came in 2021, when soprano Lisette Oropesa was performing, solo, an aria from Verdi’s La traviata which normally has a tenor part....
...Aside from the Parisian dazzle of that scene, Richard Jones’s production from 2017 is serviceable but rather cold at heart....
...It is typical that Elena Stikhina’s Aida makes her opening aria not a vocal showpiece but a detailed insight into her emotional conflict....
...sound is less gleaming than Pavarotti’s, darker, with a lower centre of gravity, but he turns out a ringing climax to “Nessun dorma” from Puccini’s Turandot and holds a well-schooled line through the two arias...
...Expect an evening of the most-loved arias performed by a stellar ensemble....
...Soraya Mafi, as Morgana, gets the hit aria “Tornami a vagheggiar” and makes a sparkling job of it, though she is still better in the lyrical music....
...There is a forthright Donna Elvira from Irish mezzo Paula Murrihy, at her best in the tricky second aria, “Mi tradi”....
...While Smith is dealt an even hand by Turnage and Richard Thomas’s libretto, critical barbs are reserved for the media....
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