LSO, Barbican. Review by Julia Pascal. What an amazing double bill the LSO offered for the start of its Barbican season under the direction Antonio Pappano: Aaron Copland’s Symphony No 3, with it haunting and thrilling Fanfare for the Common Man and Leonard Bernstein Symphony No 3 Kaddish.
music
Sense & Sensibility, The Musical. Review by Barbara Lewis. Jane Austen loved music, but words were her supreme medium for conveying the nuanced feelings of her finest characters and the vicious superficiality of the mercenary social climbers that served to highlight the quieter virtues.
Testament. Review by Barbara Lewis. Green Opera’s aim is to put sustainability and nature at its core, while redefining opera for a new era in which art and environmental consciousness unite.
Fiddler on the Roof. Review by Julia Pascal. In Fiddler on the Roof, inspired by Sholem Aleichem’s 1894 Yiddish short story, and now a celebrated revival from the 1960s, we have to explore what this means today.
The Frogs. Review by Barbara Lewis. The time is now. The place is ancient Greece. So begins this extremely freely adapted version of Aristophanes’ “The Frogs”.
Peter Grimes. Review by Barbara Lewis. In difficult times, it would seem, people crave total escapism – or deep catharsis from confronting our own failure as humans and society.
Cry-Baby, The Musical. Review by Barbara Lewis. “Cry-Baby” may be set in 1950s Baltimore, but lyrics that at once celebrate and satirise the democratic checks and balances of the “nifty country” that is the United States of America make it tailor-made as a tonic for our times.
The Marriage of Figaro. Review by Julia Pascal. In The Marriage of Figaro, director Joe Hill-Gibbins sets the comic opera in a contemporary décor which pulls the 18th century critique of misogyny into our own time.
THE GOBLIN BAND: Jenny Vuglar reviews a performance at Cecil Sharp House on 4 December 2024
Wagner and the Bayreuth Festival. Review by Graham Buchan. Wagner divides opinion. Even amongst opera lovers there are those who cannot abide his works, whilst others elevate him to almost God-like status.
Rigoletto. Review by Julia Pascal. Concept is all. And director Jonathan Miller’s decision to set Verdi’s disturbing melodrama in 1950s New York Little Italy is genius.
Bartók in Space and Time. Review by Barbara Lewis. Brussels’ Centre for Fine Arts, known as the Bozar, was designed by Belgium’s most celebrated architect Victor Horta and completed in 1929. Eight years later, Bela Bartok composed his “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta”.
By Barbara Lewis • architecture, music, year 2025 • Tags: architecture, Barbara Lewis, music