The opera coverage on The Arts Desk this week features a varied selection, from a visiting company travelling from north to south to Tosca weaving her magic to three greats in their art form coming together for an extraordinary performance piece.
'UnDance' is a collaboration between composer Mark-Anthony Turnage, artist Mark Wallinger and choreographer Wayne McGregor and is a mixture of music, art and dance. Wallinger was in charge of the visual stimuli and incorporated wordplay, there was beautiful orchestral music by Turnage and McGregor's dancers were clad to look like Muybridge's naked athletes.
Judith Flanders admits it all sounds terribly cerebral and arty, but it is simpler than it sounds on stage, is wonderfully coherent and a delight to watch. Though sometime beautiful, the staging was often painfully literal and was let down by the 3D designs superimposed over it by OpenEndedGroup. They merely distracted from Connolly's powerful performance.
With Tchaikovskys The Queen of Spades and Gilbert & Sullivans Ruddigore, Opera North are currently treating Londoners with a visit, bringing two of their main productions to the Barbican. The rather emotionally unconvincing grand opera 'Eugene Onegin' by Deborah Warner, was nothing compared to Neil Bartlett's take on Tchaikovsky, according to David Nice.
'The Queen of Spades' by Opera North on the contrary had plenty to say and said it far more convincingly. 'Ruddigore' by Opera North on the other hand, could benefit from being freshened up and simplified and was bettered by the smaller fringe companies according to Nice.
ENO's Tosca was also preferred to Nice to their concurrent big hitter 'Eugene Onegin'. Puccini's thriller about negotiating politics and lust is here bolstered by three big voices that are well up to the demands of this exacting piece. Claire Rutter, Anthony Michaels-Moore and Gwyn Hughes Jones were the voices that provided big sounds. Nice judged it to beat even the much-loved version by the Royal Opera starring Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann and Bryn Terfel.
אין תגובות:
הוסף רשומת תגובה