William Boyd and Colin Mathews (Photo: Mark Allan)
During his long career the composer Colin Matthews has been associated with several other composers, he assisted both Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst at the Aldeburgh Festival, he and his brother David assisted Deryck Cooke on the completion of Mahler's Symphony No. 10, whilst more recent projects have seen Colin orchestrating Debussy. And since his orchestral Fourth Sonata (written 1974–75) won the Scottish National Orchestra's Ian Whyte Award, Colin's work has unfolded in a variety of genres, but until now never opera.
On 13 June 2025, Colin's first opera, A Visit to Friends will premiere at the Aldeburgh Festival. The new opera is a collaboration with novelist and playwright William Boyd (whose first opera libretto it is), and intriguingly whilst Boyd's libretto has its origins in the Chekhov short story of the same name, written in 1898 almost as a study for The Cherry Orchard, Colin's music is partly inspired by that of Scriabin. I recently went to chat with Colin and William about the new opera and their collaboration.
The new opera takes the form of a group of contemporary singers rehearsing a hitherto unknown opera by a Russian composer from the early years of the 20th century, with William's libretto for the 'rediscovered' opera channelling Chekhov and Colin's music channelling Scriabin, but around these scenes are scenes of the contemporary singers rehearsing and gradually, for them, life starts to imitate art.
The work just grew through Colin and William's collaboration, but from the outset, Colin was clear that he wanted to write an opera about opera. The two men first met in 2019 and agreed to collaborate, but initially with no clear idea of the direction the collaboration would take.
History's Lovers: Telemann: Overture-Suite: Burlesque de Quixotte, Handel: arias from Alcina, & Rodelinda, Concerto Grosso in F op. 6 No. 9, Telemann: aria from Orpheus; Jacqueline Stucker, La Nuova Musica, David Bates; Wigmore Hall Reviewed 28 May 2025
Love, from the comic to the obsessive to the devoted to real vengeance. Handel and Telemann brought vividly alive in an evening that rose far above a greatest hits concert and gave us something memorable
Under the title History's Lovers, David Bates and La Nuova Musica were joined by soprano Jacqueline Stucker at Wigmore Hall on 28 May 2025 for an evening of music by Handel and Telemann, friends as well as contemporaries, which moved from the comic in Telemann's Don Quixote to the obsessive with Handel's Alcina and then the devotedly marital with Handel's Rodelinda with an aria from Telemann's Orpheus bringing things to a virtuoso close.
We began with Telemann's late Overture-Suite: Burlesque de Quixotte which was probably written around 1761 when the composer was 80. In eight French-style movements, the suite began with an overture that really did channel Lully, with Bates and his ensemble giving us vivid rhythms and exciting passagework. The story then unfolded with Quixote's restless, fevered sleep, his fast and furious attack on the windmills, a gentle flute (Leo Duarte who was doubling flute and oboe) over sighing strings for Quixote mooning after Dulcinea, tossing Sancho Panza in a blanket with some great scene painting, and then the two trying to gallop away in what was a pure romp before finally a vividly urgent finish.
Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer - Eleanor Dennis, Paul Carey Jones - Opera Holland Park (Photo: Ali Wright)
Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer; Paul Carey Jones, Eleanor Dennis, Robert Winslade Anderson, Neal Cooper, Angharad Lyddon, Colin Judson, director: Julia Burbach, City of London Sinfonia, conductor: Peter Selwyn; Opera Holland Park Reviewed 29 May 2025
The company's first venture into Wagner is a triumph, combining the mythic with the personal in a production that filled the auditorium with vivid drama yet had a quiet intensity in the more intimate moments.
Opera Holland Park opened its 2025 season with a new production of Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer, the most compact of his mature music dramas, though this still represented a significant increase in scale for the company with a large chorus with larger than usual orchestral forces. Not only was this Opera Holland Park's first staging of Wagner, but there were two debuts in the cast with Paul Carey Jones (an experienced Wotan most recently at Longborough) making his debut as the Dutchman and Eleanor Dennis singing her first Senta (building on previous experience at Longborough, and as Eva in Die Meistersinger with Saffron Opera Group).
Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer - Paul Carey Jones - Opera Holland Park (Photo: Ali Wright)
Naomi Dawson's fixed set depicted a world gone awry with nothing quite true and a vast ramp presenting Senta's room at an alarming angle. There was nothing sea-going about it, yet, Dawson and Burbach managed to vividly suggest the sea and the ships where necessary, making full use of the whole Opera Holland Park stage, the chorus scenes in Acts 1 and 3 really have the whole stage erupting into action. Sussie Juhlin-Wallen's costumes were modern without making too much point, whilst the Dutchman wore an outfit that merged the trendy with a suggestion of the East, creating a definite otherness to the character.
This year Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival not only returns for its 18th edition, but is expanding and there with performances in Newcastle and London. Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival is at Alphabetti Theatre in Newcastle on 27 and 28 June, and then moves to the Cockpit in London from 22 September to 5 October.
The Newcastle performances build on Tête à Tête's collaborations with North East artists and the Royal Northern Sinfonia developed over several years. Tête à Tête is partnering with North Tyneside Music Education Hub to deliver QUEST 2025—a fantasy-inspired opera project running over Summer & Autumn 2025 co-created with young people in North Shields, rooted in community storytelling and bold new music-making, culminating in performances on Sunday 19 October at The Exchange 1856 2025. QUEST brings together school pupils, community chorus members, professional singers, and Royal Northern Sinfonia.
At Alphabetti Theatre in Newcastle, Hull Urban Opera will be bringing their show It must have been Tuesday. Created by the company's artistic director, Russell Plows as a preparation for performers in an up-close, immersive style of performance, the aim of the show is to remove all potential barriers to communica7on (no set, costume, character or libretto - the words are the singers’ own) resulting in a warm, direct delivery of often sensitive ideas conveyed through both speech and singing. The stories were first presented in Hull in 2021, and in Newcastle the true stories at this performance are written and performed by Neil Balfour and Joanna Gamble accompanied by Ellie Gaynard Evans on violin with music by Russell Plows.
Ghost is built on Emma Wheeler and Anna Appleby’s life experience as queer, neurodivergent women – stories that have not historically been told in opera, tinged with comedy, trauma, and love. This opera is the coming-together of two musical worlds, from Appleby’s Glyndebourne and BBC Philharmonic opera composition history and Emma Wheeler’s rich mezzo vocals, to Norrisette and Rosé Gold’s grungy underground electronica and DIY drag fashion extravagance. Prepare for a ghost story like no other!
Other works include the intriguing Rossini and the Overture, based around the premise of a man impersonating Rossini and failing to finish the opera! This is a work-in-progress sharing as the team test out their new approach to opera. And there are also four festival shorts, operatic extracts and experiments, from Newcastle and the surrounding area.
Until a friend gave me a leaflet for Strawberry Thieves Socialist Choir's event, William Morris: Chants for Socialists, I had been completely unaware that William Morris, along with designing, writing and political activism, wrote music as well. The music was an extension of the political activism as Morris wrote 'chants' to go with the political songs that he wrote.
On 31 May 2025 at 2.30pm, Strawberry Thieves Socialist Choir will be joined by singer/songwriter Darren Hayman and Florence Boos, editor of the Morris Archive at the University of Iowa for an event devoted to Morris' songs.
Strawberry Thieves will be performing six of Morris' songs which will be introduced by Florence Boos, who is an expert on William Morris. They will also be joined by Darren Hayman who will perform his versions of Voice of Toil and No Master.
The songs performed include A Death Song for Alfred Linnell. This was created for a pamphlet containing an account of the death of Alfred Linnell, who was killed at Trafalgar Square on 20 November 1887 during a protest, when he was trampled by a police horse. The protest became known as the first ‘Bloody Sunday’. Many of the socialists realised that their hopes of a revolution were unrealistic in the face of establishment opposition and force. Many started to look for a reformist, parliamentary way of making change for the nation’s poor and workers. The pamphlet included a death song composed by William Morris and memorial design by Walter Crane, and the proceeds of the pamphlet were given to Linnell’s family.
What cometh here from west to east awending?
And who are these, the marchers stern and slow?
We bear the message that the rich are sending
Aback to those who bade them wake and know.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.
You can read more about the protest and Morris' pamphlet at the Cheltenham Museum's website.
Full details of the Strawberry Thieves event from Facebook.
Madeleine Mitchell violin, Julian Milford piano, Kirsten Jenson cello at Leighton House
The trio of Madeleine Mitchell violin, Julian Milford piano, Kirsten Jenson cello are returning to Leighton House on Tuesday 24 June 2025 for a chamber concert that mixes a towering masterpiece with a selection of lesser known gems. They conclude the evening with Brahms' Piano Trio in B major, Op. 8, and precede this with works by Mel Bonis and George Dyson.
Mélanie Hélène Bonis studied at the Paris Conservatoire with César Franck, where Debussy was a fellow pupil but family pressure meant she did not initially pursue a career in music until her late 30s when she used the name Mel Bonis to disguise her gender. She would write over 300 pieces and Soir et Matin from 1907 is one of the best known. A pupil of Stanford and Parry, George Dyson is perhaps best known for his large-scale works such as the oratorio The Canterbury Pilgrims. Dyson said of himself as a composer, "My reputation is that of a good technician … not markedly original. I am familiar with modern idioms but they are outside the vocabulary of what I want to say" and the concert will include four of his salon pieces from the 1920s.
Brahms wrote his Piano Trio in B in 1854, not long after door-stepping Robert and Clara Schumann and impressing them with his talent. Brahms' however, was not satisfied and despite publishing the work continued to tinker. In 1889 he made such substantial revisions to the piece that he effectively created a new work.
The evening offers the opportunity to explore Leighton House and afterwards to enjoy convivial drinks and snacks in the adjacent café and garden until 9.30pm. Full details from EventBrite.
Britten: Hymn to the Virgin, John Tavener: Hymn to the Mother of God, Judith Weir: Ave Regina Cælorum, James MacMillan: The Culham Motets, O Virgo Prudentissima, Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli; BBC Singers, cond. Sir James MacMillan, Roman Catholic Cathedral, Norwich.
Wagner: Siegfried Idyll; Hummel: Trumpet Concerto, Arvo Pärt: Fratres; Beethoven: Symphony No.1; Imogen Whitehead, trumpet; Britten Sinfonia, Clio Gould, violin/director, Norwich Cathedral Reviewed by Tony Cooper: 23/24 May 2025
The BBC Singers’ concert formed part of their centenary celebrations while the Britten Sinfonia saluted Estonian composer Arvo Pärt in his 90th year.
First mentioned in the Oxford Dictionary of Music in 1747, held on a triennial basis (originally with Birmingham and Leeds) from 1824 through to 1988 and then put on an annual footing thereafter, the Norfolk & Norwich Festival ended on a high with a couple of engaging and heartwarming concerts held across the city’s two cathedrals - the Roman Catholic Cathedral dedicated to St John the Baptist and Norwich Cathedral dedicated to the Holy and Undivided Trinity, featuring the BBC Singers, conducted by Sir James MacMillan, and Britten Sinfonia, directed by Clio Gould.
It was heart-warming, too, having James MacMillan back in Norwich after a long absence conducting the BBC Singers, recently awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society’s prestigious Ensemble Award, proving a nice touch in their centenary year.
Norwich Roman Catholic Cathedral Photo: Nigel Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia
They opened with a lovely and tender reading of Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin, an early example of Britten’s mastery of word setting which received its first performance on 5 January 1931 at St John’s Church, Lowestoft. He was 16 at the time, unwell and approaching his last days at Gresham’s School in north Norfolk confined to the school infirmary where he passed has time reading John Buchan (Prester John) and swotting Chaucer for his up-coming exams.
A fine bunch, the BBC Singers must have sung Hymn to the Virgin dozens of times but, nonetheless, their timing and freshness of the piece remains constant and was joyously heard in the expansive Gothic-style surroundings of Norwich’s Roman Catholic Cathedral grandly designed by the eldest son of George Gilbert Scott.
The text Britten used was by an anonymous poet, probably dating from about 1300, written in a macaronic verse where one language is introduced into the context of another. Therefore, the main body of the choir sings in Middle English while the semi-chorus supplies a refrain in Latin.
The Three Choirs Festival is at Hereford this year, running from 26 July to 2 August 2025 with its familiar mix of large-scale choral concerts, chamber recitals, late-night events and family friendly programmes. The programme draws on not only the three cathedral choirs (Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester), but The Three Choirs Festival Chorus, drawn from auditioned amateur singers in and around Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester, the Three Choirs Festival Youth Choir for singers aged 14-25 and the Three Choirs Festival Voices which is open to everyone, with no audition required.
This year's programme celebrates Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's 150th anniversary with a performance of his major choral work, The Atonement which was written for the 1903 festival in Hereford. A large-scale 90 minute choral and orchestral work, the premiere was conducted by the composer and featured a text by local writer Alice Parsons. This year, the work is conducted by Samuel Hudson with the Three Choirs Festival Chorus and Philharmonia Orchestra plus soloists Rebecca Hardwick, Aoife Miskelly, Amy Hoyland, Martha McLorinan, Mark Le Brocq, and David Stout.
The work was unpublished and the score has been resurrected from the manuscript held by the Royal College of Music [and is now happily available on IMSLP]. For the libretto, Parsons crafted a unique libretto that features a combination of paraphrased biblical quotes from the Gospels along with her creative extra-liturgical narrative commentary, and the work features the dramatic characters of Christ (baritone), Pontius Pilate (tenor), Pilate's wife (soprano), Mary the Mother of Christ (soprano), Mary, the wife of Cleophas (mezzo-soprano) and Mary Magdalene (contralto).
Other major works at this year's festival include Mendelssohn's Elijah and Howells' Hymnus Paradisi, alongside the premiere of Richard Blackford's The Black Lake which is inspired by the 1961 Welsh novel, One Moonlit Night by Caradog Pritchard.
Other performers in Hereford include the King’s Singers, Roderick Williams, Sarah Connolly, Emma Johnson, the Carducci Quartet, and Stile Antico.
Full details from the Three Choirs Festival website.
The composer Ben Rowarth is a figure whose music I have enjoyed over the last few years with works for the Marian Consort, Helen Charlston, and the Fieri Consort crossing my path. On 3 July 2025, Patrick Allies and his ensemble Siglo de Oro will be premiering a major new work by Rowarth at Wigmore Hall.
The Fall is a dramatic secular oratorio that tells the story of the Fall of Troy from the perspective of Cassandra, who predicted the city's ruin but was ignored. The Fall uses a new text by writer and film director Sophia Carr-Gomm and is written for choir, violin and electronics, with Siglo de Oro being joined by violinist Amy Tress.
The performers have completed the evening with a fascinating programme of works around this including Jonathan Harvey's Stabat Mater, written in 2004 for Royaumont Abbey in France and reworking Palestrina's Stabat Mater for choir and electronics, Palestrina's Lamentations for Maundy Thursday, Hildegard of Bingen's O spectabiles viri and a movement from Bach's Partita No. 2 in D minor for solo violin BWV1004.
Verdi: Simon Boccanegra - Roland Wood, Antony Hermus, Vazgen Gazaryan, Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)
Verdi: Simon Boccanegra; Roland Wood, Sara Cortolezzis, Andrés Presno, Vazgen Gazaryan, Mandla Mndebele, Richard Mosley-Evans, director: PJ Harris, conductor: Anthony Hermus: Opera North at Royal Festival Hall Reviewed 25 May 2025
A finely balanced cast create a very satisfying and compelling performance of one of Verdi's darkest yet most fascinating dramas, with Opera North's chorus and orchestra on thrilling form.
Verdi's Simon Boccanegra is a strange opera. Dark and foreboding, it features four male characters none of whom are entirely admirable, a title role without a conventional aria and a heroine who veers perilously close to the Victorian Virgin. Verdi regarded his unsuccessful first version of the opera (from 1857) as too gloomy and 24 years later would use the revision as a test of whether he and Arigo Boito could work together. They created an entirely new scene to conclude Act One (the Council Chamber scene) and tweaked the rest. Boito and Verdi were canny enough not to let the new scene overbalance the old. But you cannot help wishing that the two had started again from scratch. Yet for some people, Simon Boccanegra remains their favourite Verdi opera, its distinctive dark tinta being profoundly seductive.
Opera North chose the work for their 2025 concert staging, launching the production in Bradford on 24 April for the City of Culture celebrations and ending the tour on Saturday 24 May 2025 at the Royal Festival Hall, when we caught the performance.
PJ Harris' production put the Opera North Chorus and Orchestra (47 singers, 64 instrumentalists) at the centre, using the full space of the auditorium and providing an acting area for the soloists at the front of the stage. There was very little that was semi- about this staging. Stripped down, perhaps, full acted and compelling, definitely. The climactic Council Chamber scene might have lacked the claustrophobic sense of a conventional staging, but having the chorus surrounding the audience in the stalls was something again, particularly combined with Roland Wood's magisterial performance in the title role.
Verdi: Simon Boccanegra - Andrés Presno, Sara Cortolezzis - Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)
Anna Reid's
costumes were contemporary with an elegant classical structure
providing flexible locations. In a famously complex opera, clarity was
all here with different coloured banners and rosettes for the Plebeans
and the Patricians. Inevitably, this lacked the atmospheric chiaroscuro
that the opera cries out for, but Harris and his team created and
impressive two and three-quarter hours of sustained tension.
Last year I chatted to composer Eímear Noone about writing for video games, films and TV in advance of her Video Games in Concert tour with the Heritage Orchestra [see my interview, 'What about blowing the box to pieces']. Now she returns to the Royal Albert Hall on 4 June 2025 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) for Worlds of Fantasy: Video Games in Concert, and they are joined by vocalist Aisling McGlynn and the Crouch End Festival Chorus.
This event continues the RPO’s pioneering work in this area from the PlayStation in Concert premiere in 2018 to the first ever video game concert at the BBC Proms. Alongside the concert, the RPO has released new research exploring the role of video game music in attracting younger audiences to orchestral music:
88% of under 25s are interested in video games
One in six under 25s (15%) discovered orchestral music through gaming
22% say orchestral scores enhance their gaming experience
18% of gamers say they’d be more likely to attend a concert if it featured gaming music
The Royal Albert Hall programme features iconic scores from The Last of Us, Civilisation, Fortnite, Baldur's Gate, Halo, and other fan favourites.
On Sunday 22 June 2025, Brighton Festival Chorus and City of London Sinfonia join forces at Cadogan Hall under the baton on James Morgan for a concert that features Duruflé’s Requiem, Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending (with violinist Alexandra Wood) and Fantasia on Greensleeves, plus the UK premiere of British composer Libby Croad's The Brontë Suite.
Libby wrote The Brontë Suite in January 2024, she was on sabbatical and as she loved the Brontë sisters' poems the idea of a piece based on them had been in the back of her head and the time seemed right. She effectively had free reign as there was no commission and she wrote it for choir and string quartet, figuring that was a nicely economic line-up.
The piece uses three poems, Emily's Spellbound, Anne's A Reminiscenceand Charlotte's Life. The three poems are not technically meant to be together but Libby feels that their themes of life, love and loss work well.
In fact, choirs asked her about a string orchestra version and it was this version which was used at the work's premiere by the Willoughby Symphony Choir in Sydney, Australia in March 2025 and will be used on 22 June. Ironically, the original version for choir and string quartet has yet to get an outing.
When I ask about her musical style, she comments that someone in another choir she was working with said that her music sounds very English. She admits that she likes a good melody, which is not wildly fashionable at the moment. She starts with the text, then melody and she loves scrunchy harmonies, using quite a lot of modes. She trained as a violinist and feels that you can tell this with her string writing, she likes something juicy that you can get your teeth into.
Her first study at the Royal Academy of Music was violin, with composition as second study. On leaving college, she focused on the violin but felt that something was missing. In 2016 she rekindled her writing and though she loves the violin and still plays, composition is the dream. But she feels that the two strands of her musical life help each. She comments that she has just finished playing the music for the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Hamlet whilst at the same time writing a new work of her own, and the influences feed into each other. She loves the way the two can interact, and says that she could not be a composer in an ivory tower.
She is pleased that her composing has really taken off and she now has a waiting list.
Unsurprisingly, her inspirations include RVW and Elgar, but also Rachmaninov whose Symphony No. 2 she has fond memories of playing in the youth orchestra. At college, her teacher was Gareth Wilson (who is now at Girton College). He was a great encouragement to her writing, he commissioned her first choral piece for his choir in Chelsea when she was still at college. She realised that she loved writing music and he helped her develop her writing.
The day before the London concert she has a premiere in Nottingham, The Nightingale for choir and strings, setting Walter de la Mare's poem King David. This is for the charity, Music for Everyone, with whom Libby has worked before and this new piece is about the healing power of music which will be performed by Nottingham Chamber Singers and Nottingham Chamber Players at a concert celebrating the choir's 40th birthday, further details.
She has just finished music for a play, the first time she has written for the theatre and it was an amazing experience. The play is Chronically Hopeful, a multi-disciplinary piece about unseen disability being developed by Musici Ireland. A workshop performance of the piece took place in Bray, Ireland a few days after I chatted to Libby with a big performance planned for the Autumn.
Next up, she is starting a new commission for the Dionysus Ensemble, for string quartet, clarinet and harp. The theme of the work is river safety and it will be part of a project the ensemble is doing with local children.
Libby Croad: The Brontë Suite Duruflé: Requiem Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on Greensleeves Alexandra Wood (violin) Brighton Festival Chorus City of London Sinfonia James Morgan (conductor) 22 June 2025
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum has a collection of music manuscripts written, arranged and performed by the prisoners themselves. Damaged, complete and often overlooked, composer and conductor Leo Geyer has been working with the museum, survivors and historians to bring the music back to life. The results have been presented on a Sky Arts documentary [see YouTube] and BBC Radio 4 programme [available on the BBC website].
Now, Geyer's company Constella Music will be presenting a staging of the music in The Lost Music of Auschwitz with choreography by Claudia Schreier, designs by Finlay Jenner and featuring soprano Caroline Kennedy and baritone Ed Ballard. To commemorate 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, this new opera-ballet will tell the stories of the prisoner orchestras and feature forgotten and restored music from the camp, with music including include marching songs embedded with hidden messages for fellow inmates, a sorrowful piece arranged and performed by the women’s orchestra, and a lullaby that clings to the distant memory of home and children.
The production takes place at the Bloomsbury Theatre, 3 to 7 June 2025. Full details from the theatre's website.
Yesterday (20 May 2025), Argentinian bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi celebrated his 90th birthday. A long time collaborator with ECM records [his discography is here], the label has released the first track from his upcoming album El Viejo Caminante (album release 11 July). 'El Viejo Caminante' translates as ‘The Old Wanderer’, and Dino Saluzzi is joined by his son José María Saluzzi (who first recorded with his father, at the age of thirteen, as drummer on Mojotoro) on classical guitar and Norwegian jazz guitarist Jacob Young,
The track is Quiet March, available via ECM's link tree.
A key figure in contemporary South American music. Born in the small village of Campo Santo in northern Argentina in 1935, Dino Saluzzi began playing professionally while studying in Buenos Aires, where he met Astor Piazzolla, who was then in the process of shaping the Tango Nuevo idiom. In 1956, Saluzzi returned to the rural district of Salta to concentrate on his compositions, now consciously incorporating folk music elements.
He says of his background, "My father worked on a sugar plantation, and, in his free time, he played the bandoneon and studied lead sheets of tango and folkloric music. There weren't books, or schools, or radio — nothing. Nevertheless, my father was able to transmit a musical education to me; music that, later, when I was studying, I realised that I already knew—not from the point of view of reason or rationality, but rather in a different way, a strange way, the way that is produced by oral transmission".
That notion of centrality of the oral transmission of culture is one that has remained strong in Saluzzi’s musical identity ever since. His long collaboration with ECM Records, which began in 1982 with the solo album Kultrum - and was followed by a second album entitled Kultrum in 1988, a collaboration with the Rosamunde Quartet.
Rameau: Suite from Les Boréades, Pigmalion; Samuel Boden, Rachel Redmond, Jessica Cale, Lauren Lodge Campbell, Early Opera Company, Christian Curnyn; Temple Music at Middle Temple Hall Reviewed 20 May 2025
An evening of Rameau in miniature; dances from his final opera and his best one-act opera in performances that brought out the sheer variety, colour and imagination in the music
Rameau's acte de ballet, Pigmalion, is one of the best of his one-act pieces and provides a nicely digestible sample of the composer's dramatic output without needing the full panoply of a five-act tragédie en musique. Rameau's operas are still frustratingly rare on the British operatic stage so it was a delight that Christian Curnyn and his Early Opera Company joined forces with Temple Music to present Rameau's Pigamalion and a suite of dances from Les Boréades at Middle Temple Hall. Pigmalion featured Samuel Boden as Pigmalion with Rachel Redmond as L'Amour, Jessica Cale as Céphise and Lauren Lodge Campbell as the statue.
This year is the 80th anniversary of the ending of World War Two, and organisations are finding a wide variety of ways to create events that reflect this.
For their concert at Smith Square Hall on 14 June 2025, Salomon Orchestra are joined by conductor Cathal Garvey and violinist Charlie Lovell-Jones for three 20th century English works that resonate with the anniversary in different ways - Walton's Orb and Sceptre, Britten's Violin Concerto and Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 3 'A Pastoral Symphony'.
Walton's march was written for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 and whilst the work is influenced by earlier marches by Walton himself and Elgar, it also reflects the more confident atmosphere of post-War Britain.
By contrast, Britten's Violin Concerto was written in 1938/39 and completed in the USA and Canada where Britten and Peter Pears were in self-imposed (and temporary) exile during the war. The premiere was conducted by John Barbirolli in New York and it only reached England in 1941 (at the Queen's Hall). Often lyrical and elegiac, the work is in rather contrast to Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem (of 1940) which reflected a darker more intense view of the international situation.
Soloist Charlie Lovell-Jones was a Christ Church Prize Scholar at Oxford University, he graduated in 2020 with a Gibbs Prize in Music. He received a Bicentenary Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music and graduated in 2022 with the Strings Postgraduate Prize. He was the youngest-ever member of the John Wilson Orchestra and has since led the orchestra on occasion.
Whilst Britten would write the War Requiem in the aftermath of the World War Two, an intriguing fact about the earlier world war was the several of the composers who participated in it failed to write such intense, angry works in the aftermath, composers such as Ravel, Bliss, Holst and Vaughan Williams. RVW began ideas for A Pastoral Symphony whilst he was a stretcher bearer in the Royal Army Medical Corps and rather than the English cow gazing over a fence of Constant Lambert's jibe, the works initial genesis reflected the bleak landscape of war torn Northern France, with a bugler's slip in playing the Last Post. The whole tone of the work is reflective. RVW completed the work in 1922 as A Pastoral Symphony, only later numbering it (until his Symphony No. 4 he seemed to push against numbering his symphonies).
Full details from the Sinfonia Smith Square website.
Puccini: Il Trittico; Asmik Grigorian, Alexey Neklyudov, Misha Kiria, Enkelejda Shkoza, Joshua Guerrero, Roman Burdenko, Karita Mattila, director Christof Loy, conductor Carlo Rizzi; Opéra Bastille, Paris Reviewed by Andreas Rey, 29 April 2025
An excellent evening. A near-perfect triptych. Our Paris correspondent enjoys Puccini's trilogy directed by Christof Loy with Asmik Grigorian in three soprano roles
From April 29 to May 28, the Opéra Bastille presents a new production of Puccini's Il Trittico (Triptych),
directed by Christof Loy and conducted by Carlo Rizzi. This was a co-production with the Salzburg Festival where the production debuted in 2022 with substantially the same case [see review on Bachtrack]. Three operas of different natures, all
juxtaposed to demonstrate the breadth of the Italian composer's genius. Contrary to Puccini's own
instructions, the German director begins the work with the opera buffa Gianni Schicchi, continues
with the verist opera Il Tabarro and finishes with the Puccinian opera Suor Angelica
(Sister Angelica), allowing star Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian to build up the dramatic intensity
before ending with a climactic finale.
We must begin by saluting the excellent work of the director's team, namely set designer Étienne
Pluss, costume designer Barbara Drosihn, lighting designer Fabrice Kebour and dramaturg Yvonne
Gebauer, who give each opera a different atmosphere, inspired by a film genre.
Puccini: Il Tabarro - Opéra Bastille (Photo: Guergana Damianova/OnP)
To capture the atmosphere of the opera buffa, the German director drew inspiration from the Italian
comedy films of the 1960s and 1970s.
English National Opera's announcement of its 2025/26 season (good news in itself, there is a season and it is far stronger than might have been anticipated) has come along with the news that the company finally has a music director again.
German conductor André de Ridder has been appointed as ENO music director with his first engagement as music director designate in February 2026.
The good news is that the season includes 12 productions and concerts across London and Manchester, including five new productions, with the London Coliseum still seeing a significant number of performances. The company still does not seem to be able to see a way to performing regularly in London at a smaller venue, so the season includes a number of operas more suited to medium size theatre.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
The number of London performances are rather reduced and the announced season takes us only to February in London so London opera goers (and those for whom Manchester is harder to get to), need to get the dates in their diaries. However, less of the moaning.
André de Ridder previously conducted for ENO the premieres of Gerald Barry’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant in 2005 [see my review], and Michel van der Aa’s Sunken Garden in 2013 [see my review]. In 2007, he led the world premiere of Damon Albarn’s and Chen Shi-Zheng’s animation opera, Monkey: Journey to the West at the Manchester International Festival, and conducted David Fielden's production of Prokofiev's The Gambler at Grange Park Opera [see my review]. He also curated the Spitalfields Festival in 2017 and 2018.
September 2025 sees a new production of Rossini's La Cenerentola opening at the London Coliseum. I might be wrong but I think that the last time the company staged the opera, Della Jones sang the title role and the production was one of those banished under David Pountney's regime. This time, Julia Burbach directs with Yi-Chen Lin making her ENO debut. Also debuting at ENO is Omani-born Canadian mezzo-soprano Deepa Johnny, performing the lead role of Angelina, plus Aaron Godfrey-Mayes, Charles Rice, Simon Bailey and David Ireland.
In October, London sees just two performances of what promises to be a terrific new production of Britten's Albert Herring, directed by Antony McDonald, conducted by Daniel Cohen with Caspar Singh in the title role, Emma Bell as Lady Billows, plus Mark LeBrocq, and Willard White. The production then transfers to the Lowry.
Annilese Miskimmon's new production of Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking will open at the London Coliseum in November 2025, conducted by Kerem Hasan and starring Christine Rice, Michael Mayes and Sarah Connolly. I think this will be the first professional UK production in a theatre, previous performances of the opera have either been semi-staged or at conservatoires. The production is being shared with Opera North and Finnish National Opera.
Jamie Manton directs a new production of Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the London Coliseum in February 2026. André de Ridder conducts with a cast including Rosie Aldridge, Kenneth Kellogg, Mark Le Brocq and Danielle de Niese.
Angel's Bone, the 2016 opera by Chinese-born American composer and vocalist Du Yun will be receive its UK premiered in Manchester in May 2026, produced by ENO in collaboration with Factory International and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and presented at Aviva Studios, directed by Kip Williams, with Marg Horwell as designer.
Revivals include Calixto Bieto's production of Bizet's Carmen with Niamh O'Sullivan and John Findon, the revival directed by Jamie Manton with Haruka Kuroda, conducted by Clelia Cafiero and Olivia Clarke. Christopher Alden's production of Handel's Partenope returns with both Christopher Alden and conductor Christian Curnyn returning to the production and a cast including Nardus Williams, Hugh Cutting, Rupert Charlesworth and Jake Ingbar.
Cal McCrystal's somewhat over the top production of Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore is back with Matthew Kofi Waldren conducting and a cast including Neal Davies, John Savournin, Thomas Atkins and Henna Mun. Phelim McDermott's production of Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte is back with Dinis Sousa conducting and starring Samantha Clarke, Bethany Horak-Hallett, Joshua Blue, Darwin Prakash, Andrew Foster-Williams and Ailish Tynan. And the cast then move to Manchester for semi-staged performances conducted by Alexander Joel.
Concerts include Mozart’s Women: A Musical Journey at the London Coliseum and Opera Favourites at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester.
In celebration of opera and community football in Greater Manchester, PERFECT PITCH, co-created by ENO and Walk the Plank, presents a large-scale participation programme exploring the impact of mass singing on team performance and spectator experiences. Since January 2025, PERFECT PITCH has welcomed over 250 football fans and choir members from the boroughs of Bury, Manchester and Wigan to perform football chants and operatic repertoire. A series of large-scale mass engagement opportunities will take place over Summer 2025, with a spectacular finale performance in Spring 2026.
Bizet: Carmen - Norfolk Into Opera Festival 2023 (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith)
As Norfolk's primary schools grapple with an escalating crisis in arts education funding, Anguish’s Educational Foundation and Into Opera are inviting local stakeholders, educators, philanthropists, trusts, foundations, and advocates for creative learning to a pivotal event in Norwich on Friday 23 May 2025 at The Auditorium in the Forum, Norwich to explore solutions and drive meaningful change to protect music and the arts in schools.
Named after Thomas Anguish, a Mayor of Norwich who lived between 1536 and 1617, Anguish’s Educational Foundation is one of the 4 Registered Charities in the Norwich Charitable Trusts group of Charities. The Charity makes grants to individuals and to other charities for educational purposes. Into Opera has been awarded a grant by Anguish’s Educational Foundation to partner with three local primary schools: The Bawburgh School, St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Primary School, and Sprowston Junior School, with further support from Durham University and the team behind Arts Council England’s “Durham Commission on Creativity and Education".
However, with tightening budgets and shifting priorities, the significant impact witnessed in these schools calls into question how we, as a community, can continue to nurture creativity amid dwindling financial support. This event on Friday 23 May is designed to spark a vigorous dialogue on these pressing issues and chart a collaborative path forward. Attendees will hear directly from the pupils whose lives have been transformed, as well as educators, head teachers, and representatives from Durham University, Into Opera, and Anguish’s Educational Foundation.
"This gathering challenges us to confront the stark decline in funding for creative arts support and explore transformative solutions to safeguard the future of our children’s creative and cultural development." David Hynes, CEO Norwich Charitable Trusts
For additional information or to register your attendance, please contact: Genevieve Raghu genevieve.raghu@into-opera.org.uk
Bliss' The Beatitudes performed in Coventry Cathedral for the first time, the building for which it was commissioned and written; Orla Boylan (soprano), Andrew Kennedy (tenor), Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, BBC Philharmonic, Paul Daniel (conductor) in 2012
The BBC Proms eight-week season features over 3000 artists and the first ‘all-night’ Prom in almost half a century. Avid Prommer, Tony Cooper, reports on the world’s largest classical-music festival that helps to make summer tick.
When the BBC Proms arrives, summer, in my humble opinion, arrives, too. A feast of music like no other, the Proms (running from Friday 18th July to Saturday 13th September) offers so much over its packed eight-week season with a total of 86 concerts at the Royal Albert Hall.
This is the first complete Proms series that Sam Jackson, who took over the post of controller of BBC Radio 3 and director of the Proms from David Pickard a couple of years ago, is responsible for. He has most certainly come up with an interesting, varied and attractive programme that should find widespread appeal among hard-headed Prommers while helping to attract new audiences.
Branching out, too, the Proms takes off to Bradford as part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture as well as Sunderland while returning to Bristol and Gateshead for two three-day weekend residencies with a special Prom in Belfast to mark the centenary of Radio 4’s popular ‘Shipping Forecast’ focusing on music inspired by the sea.
Contemporary music has played a significant role at St John's over the last few years whilst Christopher has done quite a bit at Truro Cathedral including releasing albums of music by Dobrinka Tabakova and Gabriel Jackson. Christopher wanted to continue this, yet felt the new album should be seen as a whole, rather than simply individual tracks. He had not collaborated with Joanna Marsh before and her new triptych consists of three pieces, commissioned for key dates in the liturgical calendar - The Hidden Light was premiered at the Choir’s Advent Carol Service in 2023, Refugee for the Epiphany Carol Service, and final movement Still to Dust for the Lent Meditation service.
For Joanna Marsh's triptych, she worked with two of Malcolm Guite's existing poems and they commissioned a third poem. The idea was to take the Biblical narrative of Advent, Epiphany and Ash Wednesday and find resonance in the world of 2025, tying the Biblical story to today because of the associations Guite makes. Seeing the Holy Family as refugees from Herod as dictator provides a lot of resonance with contemporary situations. [see my interview with Joanna Marsh at the time of the premiere of The Hidden Light]
Christopher Gray & the Choir of St John's College, Cambridge (Photo: Keith Heppell)
Offenbach: The Tales of Hoffmann - Dorothee Bienert, Jason Kim - Oldenburgisches Staatstheater
Offenbach: The Tales of Hoffmann: Jason Kim, Dorothee Bienert, Penelope Kendros, Adréana Kraschewski, Raffaela Lintl, Eleonora Fabrizi, Seungweon Lee, dir: Angela Denoke; cond: Vito Cristofaro; Oldenburgisches Staatstheater, Oldenburg, Germany Reviewed 4 May 2025
A production that certainly punched above its weight, Angela Denoke & Vito Cristofaro get so much right, with an ardent Hoffmann from Jason Kim
Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann is such a minefield that there are many ways a director can fall foul. It is certainly not one of those works that plays itself. Even beyond the editorial nightmare that the work represents [see my article 'A fascinating conundrum'], there is the fact that Offenbach habitually over wrote, creating too much material and cutting and shaping at the last minute. So, if we have a musically satisfactory edition (a big ask in the first place), we then have to create a satisfying dramatic structure.
We caught The Tales of Hoffmann at the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater partly because our holiday itinerary enabled us too. It took place in the Oldenburg State Theatre, built in 1893 as the Grand Ducal Court Theatre and most recently renovated in 1998. It is a small, but perfectly formed building seating something over 500. But the performance was indeed a welcome treat with a sure hand both in terms of direction and conducting.
The production debuted on 26 April 2025 and we caught the performance on 4 May 2025. The director was Angela Denoke, the soprano who has recently added direction to her credits, and the conductor was Vito Cristofaro. Jason Kim was Hoffmann with Dorothee Bienert as Niklausse/Muse, Penelope Kendros as Olympia, Adréana Kraschewski as Giulietta, Raffaela Lintl as Antonia, Eleonora Fabrizi as Stella, Seungweon Lee as the four villains, Seumas Beggg as the four comic tenor roles, Arthur Bruce as Schlemihl, Johannes Leander Maaas as Spalanzani and Nathanael, Irakli Atanelishbili as Lutter and Crespel. Designs were by Susana Mendoza with choreography by Fabio Toraldo.
Offenbach: The Tales of Hoffmann - Jason Kim, Penelope Kendros, Dorothee Bienert, Seungweon Lee - Oldenburgisches Staatstheater
The programme book was vague as to exactly what we were hearing though Schott's (publishers of the most recent edition from Kaye & Keck) were credited and indeed textually this was one of the most satisfactory versions that I have seen in a long time with an extremely convincing Giuilietta act. There were discreet cuts, we got rather less of the students (thankfully) than usual. But the outstanding Niklausse/Muse of Dorothee Bienert benefited from an expansive version of her role.
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