Concert Reviews

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New York Philharmonic – Gustavo Dudamel conducts Symphonies by Beethoven and Corigliano
For his second program in his season as the Philharmonic’s Music and Artistic Director Designate, Gustavo Dudamel showcased two Symphonies separated by nearly two centuries. Beethoven’s Fifth was masterfully performed,...
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Vache Baroque Festival 2025 – Campra’s Le Carnaval de Venise
André Campra was an important figure in the development of French opera between the death of Lully (1687) and Rameau's first example, Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) not least by pioneering the form...
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Bampton Classical Opera – Salieri’s La locandiera
Like almost all of his musical contemporaries, Salieri has remained so much in the shadow of Mozart, that it's easy to forget how precocious he also was in composition. La...
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Leonore Piano Trio at the 2025 Presteigne Festival
Among the 12 world premieres at this year’s Presteigne Festival (now in its 44th year), James B Wilson’s In ocean waves opened an afternoon concert given by the Leonore Piano...
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The Goethe Quartet at the 2025 Presteigne Festival
Since its formation a few years ago, the Goethe Quartet has rapidly emerged as one of the most exciting chamber ensembles of its generation. With an American residency in Vermont...
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If Opera 2025 – Baroque Double Bill – Carissimi’s Historia Jonae and Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda
To close its season this year, If Opera presented this intimate, but still dramatic, pairing of two 17th century vocal works, sacred and secular side by side. Carissimi's Historia Jonae...
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If Opera 2025 – Verdi’s Rigoletto – with Alexey Gusev, Inna Husieva & Andrés Presno; directed by Nina Brazier; conducted by Oliver Gooch
Nina Brazier's production of Rigoletto for If Opera (in its delightful new home at Church Farm, Wingfield) presents it as a lively historical spectacle, set at the court of Henry...
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Rossini Opera Festival 2025 – L’italiana in Algeri – with Daniela Barcellona, Giorgi Manoshvili & Misha Kiria; directed by Rosetta Cucchi; conducted by Dmitry Korchak
In Rosetta Cucchi’s boisterous and colourful re-imagining, Rossini’s comic masterpiece improbably employs the eponymous Italian girl (Isabella) as the leader of a drag show troupe in her showdown with the...
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Rossini Opera Festival 2025 – La cambiale di matrimonio – with Pietro Spagnoli, Paola Leoci & Jack Swanson; directed by Laurence Dale; conducted by Christopher Franklin
La cambiale di matrimonio (1810) is the work with which the 18-year-old Rossini burst upon the operatic stage (San Moisè, Venice in this case). Although it wasn't the first opera...
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Rossini Opera Festival 2025 – Zelmira – with Anastasia Bartoli, Marko Mimica & Enea Scala; directed by Calixto Bieito; conducted by Giacomo Sagripanti
Staging a long, serious opera such as Zelmira (1822) based on myth and ancient history presents quite a challenge on its own terms, to keep an audience engaged with its...
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Janáček – Kát’a Kabanová @ Glyndebourne
Unveiled during weather inclement enough to recall Ostrovsky’s storm over the Volga, Damiano Michieletto’s COVID-era production garnered mixed reviews on its initial outing. This first revival will fare similarly. I...
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Longborough Festival 2025 – Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas – with Camilla Seale, Sam Young & Jasmine Flicker; directed by Erlend Samnøen; conducted by Bjarte Eike
Longborough's closing offering this season pairs its emerging artists with the Norwegian ensemble Barokksolistene in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (1689). Erlend Samnøen’s production expands the work to recreate something of...
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Teatro Nuovo at New York City Center – Bellini’s La Sonnambula
On the second night of its two-performance visit to City Center Will Crutchfield’s Teatro Nuovo presented Vincenzo Bellini’s melodramatic La Sonnambula. Set in an early-19th-century Swiss Alpine village, the story...
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Bavarian State Opera – Fauré’s Pénélope – directed by Andrea Breth; conducted by Susanna Mälkki; with Victoria Karkacheva, Brandon Jovanovich & Rinat Shaham
If Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande was the antithetical response of one French composer to the influence of Wagner – and Parsifal in particular – Fauré’s yet later Pénélope (1913) was...
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Teatro Nuovo at New York City Center – Verdi’s Macbeth 
For the first performance in their two-day visit to City Center, Teatro Nuovo, a company and training institution specializing in bel canto opera established by Will Crutchfield in 2018, mounted...
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Bavarian State Opera – Strauss’s Die Liebe der Danae – directed by Claus Guth; conducted by Sebastian Weigle; with Christopher Maltman, Malin Byström & Andreas Schager
Described as a ‘cheerful mythology’ which adapts some stories about the Greek gods, Claus Guth’s new production of Strauss’s penultimate opera turns its wit into more of an urgent morality...
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West Green Opera – Verdi’s Macbeth – with Jean-Kristof Bouton, Mari Wyn Williams & Simon Wilding; directed by Richard Studer; conducted by Jonathan Lyness
For all that Shakespeare’s Macbeth combines something of history and tragedy, it’s probably the play’s elements of fantasy and supernaturalism that stand out most in many people’s minds, and which...
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Tanglewood Music Festival 2025 – Andris Nelsons conducts Puccini’s Tosca
In this superb concert presentation, the cast moved about in front of the orchestra, successfully telling the story with wonderful singing (from memory) and acting. The three principals at the...
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Buxton International Festival – Mozart’s The Impresario – with Richard McCabe, Nazan Fikret & Jane Burnell; directed by Christopher Gillett; conducted by Jane Glover
If there was ever any basis for the rivalry between Mozart and Salieri, it was on the occasion of an amicable competition set up by Joseph II in 1786 (not...
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Buxton International Festival – Thomas’s Hamlet – with Gregory Feldmann, Yewon Han & Allison Cook; directed by Jack Furness; conducted by Adrian Kelly
‘No one but a barbarian or a Frenchman would have dared to make such a lamentable burlesque of so tragic a theme’ was one English critic’s verdict on Ambroise Thomas’s...