Handel's Amadigi at Garsington Opera
21 June 2021
Anyone staging Handel’s “magic” opera
Amadigi needs a few tricks at the ready. In her new production for Garsington Opera, the director-designer Netia Jones puts on a winning show. The work’s supposed weaknesses — the plot is tissue-thin; there are only four main roles whose string of da capo arias leave long stretches with little interaction — become strengths. Not least, the small cast makes this baroque rarity ideal for Covid times; it’s also being staged by English Touring Opera this autumn. They’ll have to work hard to match Jones’s inventiveness; she gives us visual spectacle yet focuses on the central human drama.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla
24 June 2021
The words were poignant, the singing was superlative and the connection between performer and audience was almost tangible. Reader, I’ll confess: as Mahler faced death and God in his song Um Mitternacht, the music shifting from profound sombreness to glorious surrender, tears came to my eyes.
BEAM/Britten Sinfonia
28 June 2021
If you’re watching
BEAM, there’s a good chance that you know Nadine Benjamin as one of Britain’s fast-rising star sopranos. But who is she really? That’s a question Benjamin’s impactful autobiographical music-theatre piece, subtitled Everybody Can Stand In Their Own Light, explores over 70 minutes with still photos, video projections, lighting design and the collaboration of a number of individuals, including the excellent Decus Ensemble and music director Jan Rautio.
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