July 2021 reviews for The Times

Awakening Shadow
5 July 2021

Generally in an opera there are a few elements I would expect: characters, a story and at the very least some dramatic spark. So I’m still struggling to work out in what sense Luke Styles and Benjamin Britten’s Awakening Shadow is, as it was billed, a chamber opera. Just to clarify, this isn’t a recently rediscovered work by the long-dead Britten resurrected by Styles. Awakening Shadow is a stitching together of Britten’s Canticles, five intense, individual works on religious themes written over four decades.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/awakening-shadow-review-a-disappointing-new-chamber-opera-inspired-by-britten-jjnxbkcp3

Cendrillon/Acis and Galatea

13 July 2021

Rossini turns Cinderella into a moral fable, Massenet conjures sumptuous fairytale magic. Pauline Viardot gives us a salon entertainment that charms and delights, its three swift acts taking Cinders from rags to riches, daydreams to true love in little over an hour. Viardot may only recently be coming back into vogue, but she was revered in her lifetime, as Berlioz put it, as “one of the greatest artists in the history of music”. She sang, she played the piano, she hosted artistic soirees and, after retiring from the stage, she focused on composing. Two hundred songs and several operettas later, Viardot reached Cendrillon, which had its premiere in 1904 when she was 83.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cendrillon-acis-and-galatea-review-musical-delights-in-a-pair-of-buxton-operas-l9s9tqshc

The Return of Ulysses

14 July 2021

For some of its season this year, Longborough Festival Opera has decamped from its lovely opera house to a bright red big top located on an adjacent field. Once inside there’s a sense of the outdoors: a breeze ruffles part of the set’s shimmering silver foil fringe curtain; light aircraft buzz overhead. The stage is in the round. We are close enough to see the looks in the performers’ eyes; we are totally enveloped by the thrilling power of their voices.

Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-return-of-ulysses-review-longborough-fields-a-superb-cast-for-monteverdi-lsq9x77vh