Fascinating, distracting & frustrating: Janáček's Makropulos Case gets its first production at Covent Garden in director Katie Mitchell's farewell to opera

Janácek: The Makropulos Case - Act 2: Heather Engebretson, Susan Bickley, Jenry Waddington, Sean Panikkar, Ausrine Stundyte - Royal Opera (Photo: Camilla Greenwell/Royal Opera)

Leoš Janáček: The Makropulos Case; Ausrine Stundyte, Heather Engebretson, Sean Panikkar, Johan Reuter, Henry Waddington, Peter Hoare, Daniel Matoušek, Alan Oke, director Katie Mitchell, conductor Jakub Hrůša; Royal Opera, Covent Garden
Reviewed 7 November 2025

Covent Garden's first Makropulos Case in a fascinating yet distracting and too-complex production that is redeemed by strong musical performances including a mesmerising account of the title role

Leoš Janáček's The Makropulos Case (Věc Makropulos) made its debut at the Royal Opera House this week, nearly a century after the opera was premiered in Brno in 1926. The production represented director Katie Mitchell's avowed final opera production, as well as being Jakub Hrůša's second new production as music director (and his first new production of a Czech opera).

We caught the second performance at Covent Garden on Friday 7 November 2025. Directed by Katie Mitchell with designs by Vicki Mortimer and Sussie Juhlen-Wallen, lighting by James Farncombe and video by Sasha Balmazi-Owen, Jakub Hrůša conducted. Ausrine Stundyte was Emilia Marty, Heather Engebretson as Krista, Sean Panikkar was Albert Gregor, Johan Reuter was Prus, Henry Waddington was Kolenaty, Peter Hoare was Vitek, Daniel Matoušek was Janek, Alan Oke was Hauk-Sendorf.

If you asked, many people familiar with the opera would probably say that its biggest problem was in Act One when Janáček rather gets bogged down in the Jarndyce-v-Jarndyce-like case. It can be tricky to work out who is whom amongst the men (with three lawyers, two litigants plus the son of one) and audiences need some help. You cannot help feeling that Janáček could have done with a figure in the opening scene like Ferrando in Verdi's Il trovatore or Gurnemanz in Wagner's Parsifal, both of whom summarise the plot so far!

Janácek: The Makropulos Case - Final scene: Austrine Stundyte, Heather Engebretson - Royal Opera (Photo: Camilla Greenwell/Royal Opera)

But according to the programme book, the biggest problem for Katie Mitchell is the opera's ending. Why does Emilia Marty (now revealed as Elina Makropulos) hand the formula for eternal (well 300 years) life to Krista, a young woman whom she barely knows. Mitchell's solution is to add an extra layer to the plot, an affair between Emilia Marty and Krista so that Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern-like, Mitchell crafts an entire plot within the cracks of Janáček's existing opera. She does so via a device which is by turns fascinating, distracting and frustrating.

James Blades: Pandemonium of the One-Man Band - James Anthony-Rose on his new music theatre piece on the great percussionist

James Blades

The percussionist James Blades (1901-1999) had a career that not only spanned much of the century but also moved from circus drummer and accompanist to silent movies at the Wisbech Hippodrome, to the international classical concert hall, including a close association with Benjamin Britten, helping the composer with many of his percussion effects. But many remember him as an endearing communicator, touring the country with his lecture-recital-demonstrations.

James Anthony-Rose in James Blades: Pandemonium of the One-Man Band at Snape Maltings

Written by Robin Brooks and James Anthony-Rose, James Blades: Pandemonium of the One-Man Band was a music theatre show performed at Snape Maltings on 11 October 2025. Directed and produced by Fiona McAlpine with music direction by Tomi Rose, the event featured actor James Anthony-Rose with percussionist Sam Wilson in a show which reimagined one of Blades' lectures. Using demonstrations of instruments and techniques, and anecdotes and revelations, James Anthony-Rose told the story of Blades's remarkable life, together with a celebration of the power and mystery of his extraordinary talent and career. The BBC recorded the show, which will be broadcast on Radio 3 on 23 November 2025.

James Anthony-Rose, who co-wrote and starred in the show, is an actor, perhaps best known for his role in All Creatures Great and Small. When I asked what exactly James Blades: Pandemonium of the One-Man Band is, he laughed, said it was a good question that was really up to the listener. He described the show as a drama-documentary, though that term really came from BBC Radio 3, as that was the slot they were going to broadcast the show in. But James found the idea liberating; the show could be anything they wanted it to be.

He co-wrote the piece with Robin Brooks, who has written a lot for Radio 3. They used James Blades' autobiography, Drum Roll, as source material along with archive footage, and the show developed into a one-man show with James playing James Blades with a format not unlike Blades' percussion lectures. 

From bel canto to Harlem Renaissance: Lawrence Brownlee & Iain Burnside's recital at Wigmore Hall

Lawrence Brownlee

Tenor Lawrence Brownlee is on of the premier bel canto tenors around at the moment. And he's rightly busy, his season included a last-minute step-in as Elvino in Bellini's La sonnambula at the Met, where he recently opened in Donizetti's La fille du régiment, alongside Erin Morley, and further ahead there he stars in a new production of Bellini's I Puritani - the Met’s first in nearly fifty years.

The good news is that Brownlee is making a London appearance on 22 November 2025 in recital at Wigmore Hall with pianist Iain Burnside. Their programme is a fascinating showcase of music by Italian and American composers with nary an operatic aria in sight.

Instead, Brownless and Burnside open with a selection of songs by Donizetti before moving onto Respighi. Then they move on to Liszt's Tre sonetti di Petrarca in the virtuosic first version. Arias in all but name, this is music inspired by Liszt's sojurn in Italy in the 1830s and we can almost hear distant hints of Bellini in the vocal line, which makes it all the more desirable having them sung by a bel canto tenor.

The second half of the programme reflects Brownlee's engagement with more recent music. First there is Dominick Argento's Six Elizabethan Song and songs from Ricky Ian Gordon's Genuis Child.

Argento's songs were written in the late 1950s for the tenor Nicholas Di Virgilio. The composer said of them, "The songs are called 'Elizabethan' because the lyrics are drawn from that rich period in literature, while the music is in the spirit (if not the manner) of the great English composer- singer-lutenist, John Dowland. The main concern is the paramount importance of the poetry and the primacy of the vocal line over a relatively simple and supportive accompaniment."

Ricky Ian Gordon's Genuis Child is a cycle of ten songs written in 1993 for soprano Harolyn Blackwell. They set poems by Langston Hughes and the songs were described as "one of the freshest English language song cycles to come along in recent memory". 

Brownlee's project Rising, commissioned six of today’s leading African-American composers to set poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to song. Brownlee recorded their cycles alongside selections by Margaret Bonds and Robert Owens.  

And at the concert Brownlee will be singing Robert Owens' Desire, settings of four poems by Langston Hughes. Robert Owens (1925-2017) was born in Texas and studied in Europe after the War, returning to Germany in the late 1950s where he developed a career as a film and stage actor, composer, and pianist.

Brownlee will also be performing songs by Jasmine Barnes and Joel Thompson from his Rising project.

Full details from the Wigmore Hall website. 

 

A somewhat quirky mood: Stephen McNeff's new violin concerto for Fenella Humphreys & London Mozart Players mixes Baroque inspiration with something more contemporary

The London Mozart Players (Photo: Kaupo Kickkas)

On Friday 21 November 2025, violinist Fenella Humphreys, the London Mozart Players and conductor Jonathan Bloxham will give the premiere of the Violin Concerto by Stephen McNeff at St Martin in the Fields, London. The work is a commission from the London Mozart Players and the John Armitage Memorial Trust and it will receive a further performance at the JAM on the Marsh Festival on Romney Marsh in 2026.

McNeff has scored the piece for strings, harpsichord and percussion and he takes his inspiration from a classic baroque style, particularly in the relatively small forces required - just strings and harpsichord, but with a twist. McNeff has added percussion to the mix: temple blocks, bells, even an ominous quiet bass drum one point. He suggests that the percussion "offers a dimension not encountered in earlier music and suggests perhaps a somewhat quirky mood".

Conductor Jonathan Bloxham is pairing the work with two pieces by Beethoven, Coriolan Overture and Symphony No.3 in E flat Major Op.55, ‘Eroica’ so we can expect drama and fireworks.

Full details from the London Mozart Players' website.

A new solo album from British pianist, Alexander Ullman, features a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining selection of music by Edvard Grieg - ‘The Chopin of the North’

Edvard Grieg: Songs, Moods and Lyric Pieces; Alexander Ullman; Rubicon Classics 
Reviewed by Tony Cooper (31 October 2025)

The prize of Ullman’s album, though, is his transcription of Peer Gynt Suite, No.1, drawing out the colour of the orchestra from the piano perhaps more so than in the composer’s own version.  

First coming to international attention in 2011 after winning the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition in Budapest, Alexander Ullman has performed at such prestigious venues as Vienna’s Musikverein with the Tonkünstler Orchestra of Lower Austria under the baton of Hans Graf, the Salzburg Grosser Saal with the Mozarteum Orchestra (Patrick Hahn), the Sichuan Symphony Orchestra (Darrell Ang), Kristiansand Symfoniorkester (Julian Rachlin) and the SWR Sinfonierrchester (Joseph Bastian) whilst returning to the Sofia Philharmonic under Jonathan Bloxham.  

Other recent highlights of this globetrotting pianist include making his début at the prestigious Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, the Klavierfest Ruhr, concerto appearances with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta (under Ola Rudner), Sofia Philharmonic and Filharmonie Brno (Dennis Russell Davies), the Symphony of India Orchestra (Mikel Toms), a two-piano recital with Teo Gheorghiu at the Freiburg Festival in Switzerland while undertaken a plethora of recitals in the UK, Italy and the Netherlands.  

However, it was in the spring of 2019 that Ullman cut his first album for Rubicon featuring Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and Prokofiev’s Six Pieces from Cinderella as well as Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Firebird suites which received rave reviews. In 2022, the label released a second album featuring Franz Liszt’s first and second piano concertos along with his B minor piano sonata with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Litton. 

Portraits of Mind: music by Ian Venables, Ralph Vaughan Williams & George Butterworth in a glorious celebration of Venables' 70th birthday at Temple Music

Temple Church

Ian Venables: Out of the Shadows, Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on Greensleeves, On Wenlock Edge, Love Bade me Welcome, Butterworth: Love Blows as the Wind Blows, Ian Venables: Portraits of Mind; Gwilym Bowen, Gareth Brynmor John, William Vann, Navarra Quartet; Temple Music Foundation at Temple Church
Reviewed 4 November 2025

A celebration of Ian Venables' 70th birthday, a generous programme gave us a chance to hear his wonderful Portraits of Mind alongside the RVW work for which it is a companion, On Wenlock Edge

Temple Music's concert at the Temple Church on Tuesday 4 November 2025 brought together a number of threads. For one, it was a celebration of the 70th birthday of composer Ian Venables with a programme that included two of his song cycles. The evening began with the London premiere of Venables' Out of the Shadows which was commissioned by Robert Venables KC who is a Bencher of Middle Temple and the cycle celebrates Robert Venables' 30th anniversary with his partner Gary Morris. Ian Venables' second work of the evening was Portraits of a Mind which was commissioned by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth and was intended as a companion piece for RVW's On Wenlock Edge. In a generous programme at Temple Church we heard On Wenlock Edge along with George Butterworth's cycle Love blows as the Wind Blows.

The performers were tenor Gwilym Bowen (standing in for Alessandro Fisher at a few days notice), baritone Gareth Brynmor John, pianist William Vann and the Navarra String Quartet (Benjamin Marquise Gilmore, Eva Aronian, Sascha Bota, Brian O'Kane).

Small but perfectly formed: Wexford's chamber version of Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg still thrills and moves

Zemlinsky: The Dwarf (Der Zwerg) - Eleri Gwilym, Charne Rochford Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Zemlinsky: The Dwarf (Der Zwerg); Eleri Gwilym, Charne Rochford, Charlotte Baker, Ross Cumming, director Chris Moran, music director Christopher Knopp; Wexford Festival Opera at the Jerome Hynes Theatre
Reviewed 31 October 2025

A scaled-down version of Zemlinsky's drama that retained the work's intensity and vividly held our attention with a title role who really wrenched the heart.

In 1900, Alexander von Zemlinsky met and fell in love with Alma Schindler, one of his composition students. She reciprocated his feelings initially; however, Alma felt a great deal of pressure from close friends and family to end the relationship. They seem to have been concerned with Zemlinsky's lack of an international reputation and by an unappealing physical appearance. She broke off the relationship and subsequently married Gustav Mahler in 1902. The episode inspired Zemlinsky's orchestral fantasy Die Seejungfrau, completed in 1903. In 1907, Zemlinsky married but the marriage was an unhappy one.

This seems to be the background to Zemlinsky's decision to write his opera Der Zwerg with a libretto loosely based on Oscar Wilde's short story, The Birthday of the Infanta. Commentators suggest that Zemlinsky may have felt some sort of identification with the title role in the opera. Whilst it is easy to project the opera's leading characters onto Zemlinsky and Alma Schindler, this can also feel like lazy hindsight.

Zemlinsky: The Dwarf (Der Zwerg) - Charne Rochford Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Zemlinsky's The Dwarf, sung in an English translation by Viktor Jugovic was one of the Pocket Operas presented by the Wexford Festival Opera this year. I caught the final performance on 31 October 2025 at the Jerome Hynes Theatre, the studio theatre at the National Opera House in Wexford. The production was directed by Chris Moran with designs by Lisa Krugel. Charne Rochford played the Dwarf with the remaining cast members drawn from the Wexford Festival Chorus. Eleri Gwilym as Donna Clara, the Infanta, Charlotte Baker as Ghita, Ross Cumming as Don Estoban, the chamberlain, Victoria Harley, Olivia Carrell and Erin Fflur as maids, and Cerys MacAllister, Heather Sammon, Eleanor O'Driscoll and Camilla Seal as friends of the Infanta. Music director Christopher Knopp accompanied on the piano.

The Pebbles We Keep: composer Monica McGhee unveils her debut song cycle following her successful battle with thyroid cancer

Soprano, composer and alumna Monica McGhee will unveil her debut song cycle, The Pebbles We Keep, on Sunday 23 November at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) in the Stevenson Hall. McGhee has taken poems penned by Scottish women throughout history – spanning 400 years – and set them to music. They’ll be performed by singers of all ages with a female actor reciting each poem in its original form before each song.

McGhee explains, "The Pebbles We Keep remembers the poets who were often overlooked in their own lifetimes, while offering opportunities for today’s Scottish singers to be heard, in a bid to rebalance the deficit of female roles available within the opera world. It aims to honour Scotland’s cultural roots while creating new repertoire that future generations of singers can perform."

The poems reflect a wide range of women’s experiences, from disability and working-class struggle to loss, resilience and creativity, by writers including Janet Hamilton, Jessie Anderson, Carolina Oliphant (Baroness Nairne), Mary Mackellar and Mary Symon with the oldest poem being Elizabeth Melville’s Ane Godlie Dreame from 1603 – the first published poem by a Scottish woman. Contemporary poet Lisa Kennedy’s The Pebbles We Keep gives the cycle its name.

Monica McGhee began her musical life as a pianist and trumpet player. She studied at RCS’s Junior Conservatoire of Music before embarking on her Bachelor of Music undergraduate degree in Vocal Performance. Monica was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2017 which looked like it would put a premature end to her career. As she battled the disease and subsequent treatment to repair her voice following emergency surgery, she spent a number of seasons singing extra chorus at the Royal Opera House, with highlights including a tour to Tokyo in 2019.

Having successfully recovered from her illness, she was accepted as the soprano Young Artist at The National Opera Studio for 2020-2021. Recent roles include the title role in Tosca for Opera Bohemia, Beatrice in Beatrice and Benedict for Mid Wales Opera and the leading role of Iolanta for If Opera. Monica made her English National Opera debut earlier this year, playing Mary Beaton in Thea Musgrave's Mary, Queen of Scots [see my review], on the anniversary of her cancer diagnosis.

The video shows Monica McGhee performing one of the songs from The Pebbles We Keep 

Full details from the RCS website. 

Vivid presence & engagement: Peter Whelan & Irish Baroque Orchestra in Bach's Mass in B minor at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Bach: Mass in B Minor - Peter Whelan, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Bach: Mass in B minor; Rachel Redmond, Katie Bray, Hugh Cutting, Anthony Gregory, Matthew Brook, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Peter Whelan; Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin
Reviewed 1 November 2025

No novelties, simply a desire to present the music in as compelling and engaged manner as possible with just ten singers and chamber forces

Having seen Peter Whelan and the Irish Baroque Orchestra in action at the BBC Proms and at Wigmore Hall, it was a great joy to be able to catch them on their home turf when, on Saturday 1 November 2025, the performed Bach's Mass in B minor at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin with soloists Rachel Redmond, Katie Bray, Hugh Cutting, Anthony Gregory and Matthew Brook, plus ripieno singers Aisling Kenny, Amy Wood, Laura Lamph, Christopher Bowen and William Gaunt.

Christ Church Cathedral is the elder of Dublin's two medieval cathedrals. Founded in the 11th century and rebuilt in stone in the 12 century, collapse and neglect meant that in the later 19th century George Street was brought in to renovate the building. It is now a handsome mix of surviving medieval and Victorian pastiche, complete with some superb encaustic tiles [see my post on Instagram]. The building was pretty much full for the concert and from my seat in the fourth row the acoustics proved to be surprisingly warm and sympathetic, and chatting to other audience members after the concert their experience was similar.

Like his other great late summation works such as The Art of Fugue, Bach left no clear idea of performance intentions with the Mass in B minor. Certainly, as the admirable article in the programme book by Andrew Johnstone explained, most of the movements are based on pre-existing material. But what did Bach intend? With Bach's passions, musicologists and performers can mine the surviving performance information and debate (usually rather passionately) what was intended, but with the mass performers are more on their own.

Bach: Mass in B Minor - Peter Whelan, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Thankfully, Peter Whelan cleaves to the preference for smaller forces. His five soloists were joined by five ripieno singers to create a choir and it was clear we had a vocal ensemble of ten solo singers, not a bland choral blend. They were complemented by an instrumental group of eleven strings, woodwind, trumpets and timpani, plus organ along with harpsichord played by Peter Whelan. In terms of orchestral balance, the organ/harpsichord keyboard contribution felt a little underpowered but that was the only complaint. There were no novelties, simply a desire to present the music in as compelling and engaged manner as possible.

Il viaggio a Reims: members of the Wexford Factory dazzle in Rossini's occasional showpiece despite moving the action to an asylum

Rossini: Il viaggio a Reims - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims; Wexford Factory, director Rosetta Cucchi, conductor Manuel Hartinger, Wexford Festival Opera; National Opera House
Reviewed 31 October 2025

A brilliant showcase for the young artists of the Wexford Factory who dazzled and engaged in Rossini's showpiece music, though transferring the action to an insane asylum felt in doubtful taste

Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims was an occasional piece, not so much because of the references to Charles X's coronation in Rheims to which the opera refers, but because the occasion drew forth a cast of 14 distinguished soloists including Giuditta Pasta (for whom Bellini wrote the title roles in La sonnambula and Norma) and Laure Cinti-Damoreau (who would premiere several of Rossini's French operas).

Since the work's modern premiere at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro in 1984, the piece has become more common on stages as something of a party piece, with recent UK performances including at Covent Garden (as a showcase for the Jette Parker Young Artists) and more recently at English Touring Opera [see my review]. These performances demonstrated that the work does have a plot and that it works in situations divorced from the original proceedings.

At this year's Wexford Festival Opera, Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims was chosen as a showcase for the Wexford Factory young artists and to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the work's premiere. The work was performed in an orchestral reduction by the conductor Manuel Hartinger that used around 14 instruments (plus on-stage flute and harp). I caught the final of a series of morning performances at the National Opera House on Friday 31 October 2025. The production was directed by Rosetta Cucchi, the festival's artistic director, with costumes by Massimo Carlotto and lighting by Paolo Bonnapace.

The cast was made up of singers from the Wexford Factory, with five roles being double cast, and from the festival chorus - Maria Matthews, Cerys MacAllister, Laure Aherne, Helen Stanley, Gabe Clarke, Sean Tester, Aqshin Khudaverdiyev, Ihor Mostovoi, Seamus Brady, Tong Guo, Joshua McCullough, Conor Prendeville, Rory Lynch, Meilir Jones and Loughlin Deegan.

Rossini: Il viaggio a Reims - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Perhaps because the performance had originally been planned as a semi-staging, though there was in fact nothing semi about it, Cucchi chose to reject the original scenario and set the opera in an asylum. As Cucchi explains in the programme book, 'a whimsical asylum, where each aristocrat becomes a lovable patient, each with his own delightful obsession'. Whilst she claims that the production is not 'mocking illness' there was something a little uncomfortable about watching these various obsessives.

Deidamia: a welcome opportunity to catch Handel's final Italian opera in Wexford, though George Petrou's production feels a little self-indulgent

Handel: Deidamia - Nicolò Balducci - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Handel: Deidamia; Sophie Junker, Nicolò Balducci, Sarah Gilford, Bruno de Sá, Rory Musgrave, Petros Magoulas, George Petrou, Wexford Festival Opera; National Opera House, Wexford
Reviewed 30 October 2025

Handel's final opera in a stylish production that combines playful elements with some powerful singing but which lingers a bit too lovely over details leading to an over-long evening

It is likely that Handel did not write his opera Deidamia in 1741 with a view to it being his final Italian opera. But Handel's tussles with the rival Opera of the Nobility, even though his company had ultimately come out on top, had perhaps not only left him feeling somewhat jaded by Italian opera but left the opera going public in London jaded too. Add to this that Handel had started to discover the possibilities of oratorio and you have a situation where everything could change. Oratorio did not require expensive sets, and its focus on English singers led Handel to work with a group of soloists many of whom he had trained himself. Somehow the complexities and costliness of staging Italian opera got left behind.

And if we focus on those final Italian operas it becomes clear that Handel was experimenting with the form itself. Whilst Ariodante and Alcina from 1735 both seem to hark back to Handel's glory days, his later operas included Arminio (1737) which is so compressed as to be almost telegraphic, Giustino (1737) and Serse (1738) where the plots incorporate rather more of the early Venetian plot than was usual in 18th century London. Serse's semi-comic elements also bring forth a Handel we are not used to. This sense of the sly satirical continues in Imeneo (1740) where the heroine ends up with the 'wrong' man - she chooses the robust baritone whilst the noble (castrato) hero does not get the girl. Something similar is happening in Deidamia (1741) where the hero spends most of the opera pretending to be a women, except in Handel's performance the singer was a woman. Structurally these operas also reveal a Handel who is experimenting with form, no longer reliant solely on the large scale da capo aria.

Handel: Deidamia - Bruno de Sá, Sophie Junker - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Deidamia was not a success and Handel did not even raid the opera as a source for later works. Instead it languished until more recent 20th century performances, but even then it remains a real rarity. Wexford Festival Opera included it in their Myths & Legends season in a co-production with the Göttingen Handel Festival whose artistic director, George Petrou conducted and directed. We caught the final performance on Thursday 30 October 2025, with Sophie Junker as Deidamia, Nicolò Balducci as Ulisse (Odysseus), Sarah Gilford as Nerea, Bruno de Sá [last seen as Cleofide in Vinci's Alessandro nell'Indie at Bayreuth, see my review] as Achille (Achilles), Rory Musgrave as Fenice (Phoenix) and Petros Magoulas as Licomede. Designs were by Giorgina Germanou with video by Arnim Friess.

Different musical accents: Le Trouvère, Verdi's French revision of Il trovatore receives a rare outing in Wexford

Verdi: Le Trouvère - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Verdi: Le Trouvère; Lydia Grindatto, Eduardo Niave, Giorgi Lomiseli, Kseniia Nikolaieva, Luca Gallo, director: Ben Barnes, conductor: Manuel  Hartinger, Wexford Festival Opera; National Opera House, Wexford
Reviewed 29 October 2025

Very much festival fare, Verdi's French revision to Il Trovatore receives a strong performance from Wexford's international, non-Francophone cast in a staging which catches fire at the end

Verdi in French is an interesting and somewhat underappreciated thread running through his operas. The Paris Opera was important to him, his aim with operas such as Jérusalem, Les vêpres siciliennes, and Don Carlos was to rival Meyerbeer and for whatever reason the Paris Opera thought it important to have a major Italian composer writing operas for them, just as Donizetti had done.

The company had put on Luisa Miller (in French) without Verdi's permission, and Les vêpres siciliennes would fall out of the repertoire for the lack of the right voices, whilst the success of Don Carlos came at a time when Meyerbeerian French Grand Opera was falling out of favour. Yet, Verdi's interactions with La grande boutique, as he called it, are important and his later operas such as Aida and Un ballo un maschera are inconceivable without his experience of and appreciation of French Grand Opera.

But times were a-changing. By the time the Paris Opera wanted to perform Verdi's Otello they planned give it in Italian, something Verdi found incomprehensible. And gradually Meyerbeer's popularity in Paris waned, replaced by the operas of Wagner.

Verdi: Le Trouvère - Lydia Grindatto - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Verdi's Le Trouvère is an interesting way-station in this journey. Il trovatore was translated into French and performed in Brussels, but for Paris Verdi decided to do a new version. This wasn't a thorough-going rewrite like he would do with Macbeth, but a reorientation of the work. Recitative was made to work in French, the orchestrations were adjusted and made more sophisticated, a substantial ballet was added to Act Three and adjustments made to the ending. This version gained currency in French speaking countries, but it never became the prime version, probably because a principal focus of Verdi's adjustments was making the recitatives work in French prosody.

It was this fascinating piece of musical history that the Wexford Festival chose to include in this year's festival. We caught the performance of Verdi's Le Trouvère at the National Opera House on Wednesday 29 October 2025. Manuel Hartinger (replacing Marcus Bosch for the final two performances) conducted the Wexford Festival Orchestra. The production was directed by Ben Barnes with sets by Liam Doona, costumes by Mattie Ulrich, movement by Libby Seward and projections by Arnim Friess. Eduardo Niave was Manrique, Giorgi Lomiseli was Le Comte de Luna, Luca Gallo was Fernand, Lydia Grindatto was Leonore and Kseniia Nikolaieva was Azucena.

The City Music Foundation has announced the new cohort of artists joining the CMF Artist Programme as 2025 CMF Artists.

City Music Foundation Artists 2025 (Photo: Benjamin Ealovega)

The City Music Foundation has announced the new cohort of artists joining the CMF Artist Programme as ‘2025 CMF Artists. Becoming a 2025 CMF Artist will mean they each receive financial and advisory support for their project alongside the coaching, performance opportunities and other numerous short and long-term benefits and help that CMF continues to offer.

CEO of CMF, Clare Taylor says: "These eight soloists and ensembles were selected from a large number of exciting, talented performers because of their unique and innovative approach and their exceptional accomplishment. CMF will help them reach new audiences through very individual projects - including film making in Armenia, a baroque tour with electronics, recording previously unheard female composers, a new commission for wind quintet, and new work by a singer-songwriter and by a pianist- composer, as well as other CD and video recording."

• Basil Alter, violin - Originally from Tennessee, before moving to London he studied at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. In the 2025–26 season, he divides his time between the United States and Europe.
• Ensemble Renard, wind quintet - Founded in 2018 at the RAM and GSMD, Ensemble Renard were Chamber Music Fellows at the Royal Academy of Music in 2021.
• Immy Churchill, Jazz Singer & Singer/Songwriter - She graduated from The Royal Academy of Music in 2024 and was a finalist in the Tina May Young Jazz Musician Award
• Intesa Duo, Gamba Duo & Voice - Intesa was formed in 2023 at the Royal Academy of Music by Lucine Musaelian and Nathan Giorgetti, with the goal of celebrating the viol’s combination with the voice. Intesa is an Italian word meaning “understanding”, or a meeting of minds.
• Jong Sun Woo, Piano (with Associate Artist Felix Gygli, baritone) - Jong Sun Woo recently won the Pianist Prize at Wigmore Hall/Bollinger International Song Competition 2024 and with baritone Giacomo Schmidt, the 1st prize at Wolf International Art Song Competition 2024 in Stuttgart
• Londinium Consort, Baroque Ensemble - An emerging ensemble based in London. Exploring spaces where old and new meet, the ensemble takes its name from the ancient name of the City of London, highlighting the city’s long and richly varied cultural landscape
• Violetta Suvini, Violin - Irish-Italian violinist Violetta Suvini enjoys a varied concert diary across the UK and Europe. She is the 2024 recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society's Emily Anderson Prize
• Will Harmer, Piano and composer (with Associate Artists Sebastian Hill, tenor & Gabriel Francis-Dehqani, cello) - Will Harmer is a London-based composer and pianist. He is an Oxford Song Young Artist 2024-25. He has been commissioned by the BBC Singers, Oxford Song and Ludlow English Song festivals and was a National Youth Choirs Young Composer 2024

Full details from the CMF website.

'A forceful and naturally musical work with very defined themes' - composer Asadbek Turgunov from Uzbekistan wins the 2025 Brusa Foundation Award

Asadbek Turgunov 

Last year composer and teacher Elisabetta Brusa introduced her Brusa Foundation Award in an article for us [see Elisabetta's article]. The award is to give opportunities to composers who recreate new, free and personal symphonic thought with a tonal basis. The winner of the second edition of the Award has now just been announced.

The Foundation Committee received 48 scores from 18 countries. From these they chose Maqom Simfoniya by Asabdek Turgunov from Tashkent, Uzbekistan to be the winner. The Committee said of the chosen work:

"We found Maqom Simfoniya a forceful and naturally musical work with very defined themes, fluidity and instrumentally colourful. The themes were rhythmically and harmonically full of forceful fantasy and included traits of a vivid cultural tradition and identity...We would also like to highlight how much we were impressed by the composer’s freedom of thought."

Asadbek Turgunov is an Uzbek composer, pianist, and arranger, born in 2000, in Andijan, Uzbekistan. He received his professional education at the State Conservatory of Uzbekistan, where he studied composition under Professor Mirkhalil Mahmudov. He later completed his master’s degree at the Botir Zokirov Institute of National Pop Art, deepening his exploration of musical synthesis between academic and popular idioms. His winning work can be heard on YouTube.

Full details from the Brusa Foundation's website.

There was no closure here: four Irish women composers give voice to women of the Magdalene Laundries in remarkable performances from Lotte Betts-Dean & Deirdre Brenner in Oxford

The Magdalene Songs - Deirdre Brenner, Lotte Betts-Dean - Oxford International Song Festival (Photo: TallWall Media)

The Magdalene Songs: Elaine Agnew, Elaine Brennan, Rhona Clarke, Deirdre McKay; Lotte Betts-Dean, Deirdre Brenner; Oxford International Song Festival at the Holywell Music Room
Reviewed 23 October 2025

Deirdre Brenner's remarkable project to honour the women from the Magdalene Laundries in music, her given outstanding and devastating voice by Lotte Betts-Dean

The early evening concert at Oxford International Song Festival on 23 October 2025 continued the day's Irish theme yet with a very different tenor to the subject matter from the lunchtime focus on Thomas Moore [see my review]. 

From 1922 to 1996 more than 10,1000 women and girls were incarcerated in Ireland's Magdalene Laundries. Pianist Deirdre Brenner's The Magdalene Songs is an ongoing project to honour these women by giving voice to their experiences. I interviewed Deirdre Brenner earlier this year when she introduced the project, see my interview.

On 23 October 2025 at the Holywell Music Room, pianist Deirdre Brenner was joined by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean for The Magdalene Songs presenting a sequence of ten songs by Elaine Agnew, Elaine Brennan, Rhona Clarke and Deirdre McKay, with six of the songs being world premieres. Nine of the songs were settings of extracts from interviews with survivors preserved by Justice For Magdalene Research, with each song named after the woman whose testimony it presented. The final song, Litany to the Magdalene Dead by Deirdre McKay was intended to honour the life of each woman who died in a Magdalene Laundry.

Lyric beauty & great storytelling: Young Artists tenor Hugo Brady & pianist Mark Rogers in Moore's Melodies at Oxford International Song Festival

Mark Rogers, Hugo Brady - Oxford International Song Festival (Photo: TallWall Media)

Moore's Melodies: traditional, Stanford, Ina Boyle, Schumann, Duparc, Barber, Britten, Johnny Patterson; Hugo Brady, Mark Rogers; Oxford International Song Festival at the Holywell Music Room
Reviewed 23 October 2025

One of the festival's Young Artist duos gives an imaginative exploration of song inspired by Thomas Moore from folksong to Ina Boyle to Samuel Barber, along with a delightful tribute to John McCormack

The lunchtime recital at the Holywell Music Room on 23 October 2025 as part of the Oxford International Song Festival showcased one of the duos from the festival's Young Artist Programme. Under the title Moore's Melodies, tenor Hugo Brady and pianist Mark Rogers presented a programme that leveraged Brady's Irish heritage by focusing on an Ireland experience partly through the ears of Thomas Moore (1779-1852) the Irish poet whose Irish Melodies (with the first of ten volumes appearing in 1808) set his poems to old Irish tunes.

We heard traditional songs, plus music by Stanford, Ina Boyle, Robert Schumann, Henri Duparc, Samuel Barber, Helen Blackwood, Britten and Johnny Patterson.

I had been impressed when I heard Hugo Brady with The Mozartists in their Opera in 1775 concert at Cadogan Hall recently [see my review], so it was great to get the chance to hear him in recital in a more intimate venue.

Baba Yaga: Songs and Dances of Death: mezzo-soprano Rowan Hellier pushes boundaries with a music theatre piece exploring the figure from Slavic folklore

Baba Yaga: Songs & Dances of Death - Sholto Kynoch, Ana Dordevic, Carola Schwab, Rowan Hellier - Oxford International Song Festival (Photo: TallWall Media)

Baba Yaga: Songs and Dances of Death - Elena Langer, Mussorgsky, Dvorak, Janacek, Purcell, Britten, Heggie; Rowan Hellier, Sholto Kynoch, Ana Dordevic, Carola Schwab, Andreas Heise; Oxford International Song Festival at the Olivier Hall, St Edward's School
Reviewed 22 October 2025

Something between a danced song-recital and music theatre, this remarkable evening explored the fascinating character of Baba Yaga from Slavic myth, embodied by three women including the astounding performance from Rowan Hellier both singing and dancing

Having focused on Shostakovich for the lunchtime and afternoon concerts at the Oxford International Song Festival on 22 October 2025 [see my review], the evening event kept the Slavic theme by turning its attention to Baba Yaga. In the Olivier Hall of St Edward's School, the festival presented Baba Yaga: Songs & Dances of Death, a music theatre piece that featured mezzo-soprano Rowan Hellier and pianist Sholto Kynoch along with dancers Ana Dordevic and Carola Schwab. The evening was co-directed by Hellier and choreographer Andreas Heise [see my recent interview with Rowan Hellier for more background on the project].

This was something between a dance piece and a song recital, with Hellier moving alongside the two dances, with costumes and lighting by Sascha Thomsen and Helene Rindtorff. The piece flowed continuously for an hour and a quarter and explored various themes around Baba Yaga, a figure from Slavic folk lore who is by turns maiden, mother and crone. Our image of the witch Baba Yaga from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (which was included in the evening) is only part of the story.

Baba Yaga: Songs & Dances of Death - Rowan Hellier, Ana Dordevic - Oxford International Song Festival (Photo: TallWall Media)

The performance centred on two main works: songs from Mussorgsky's Songs & Dances of Death were scattered throughout the evening whilst at the centre was the premiere of Elena Langer's song-cycle Lovely Weather for Witches.

Focus on Shostakovich: tenor Oliver Johnston's fearlessness & challenge, plus speaker Philip Ross Bullock in engaging form at the Oxford International Song Festival

Oliver Johnston

Britten: Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Shostakovich: Six romances on texts by Japanese poets, Elena Langer: Two Mandelstam Songs, Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn; Oliver Johnston, Natalie Burch
Shostakovich: A life in Song: Philip Ross Bullock, Katy Thomson, Rustam Khanmurzin
Holywell Music Room, Oxford International Song Festival
Reviewed 22 October 2025

Shostakovich was very much the focus with a lecture-recital alongside a recital from Oliver Johnston whose fearless performances with his relish for the text brought Shostakovich and Britten's work alive

Wednesday 22 October at the Oxford International Song Festival had something of a Slavic flavour to it, with a focus on Shostakovich whose anniversary is being celebrated. At lunchtime tenor Oliver Johnston and pianist Natalie Burch gave a recital which paired Britten with Shostakovich alongside a new work by Elena Langer whose work also featured in the evening programme. The afternoon was devoted to Shostakovich with a lecture recital by Philip Ross Bullock.

My experience of Oliver Johnston's singing has largely been through opera, he was Don Jose in Opera Holland Park's Carmen, Turiddu in Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana at Blackheath Halls Opera and Bob Boles in Britten's Peter Grimes at Welsh National Opera. When opera singers go into the concert hall, the results can sometimes lack the edge that they bring to their opera performances, but Johnston's lunchtime recital with pianist Natalie Burch on 22 October 2025 at the Holywell Music Room as part of the Oxford International Song Recital had a wonderful fearlessness about it and a sense of challenge, both to him and us. 

He began with Britten's Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo (1940), then moved on to Britten's friend and contemporary Shostakovich with Six romances on texts by Japanese poets (1932), then the premiere of Elena Langer's Two Mandelstam Songs and finally a group of Mahler's songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn.

Throughout the recital, whether singing in Italian, Russian or German, Johnston displayed a remarkable relish for the words, not only projecting them but absorbing them into the musicality of his performance, and also the physicality of his presentation. I have no idea of his familiarity with Renaissance Italian, Russian or German folk-poetry, but his manner convinced us and let us know that every syllable set by the composers really mattered.

A series of high-profile concerts in Paris marked the centenary of the celebrated and distinguished Russian-born cellist, Valentin Berlinsky, founder and cellist of the Borodin String Quartet.

Schubert: Trout Quintet - Mikhail Kopelman, Loïc Rio, Laurent Marfaing, François Kieffer, Grigory Kovalevsky, Elisabeth Leonskaja (Photo © Nathanael Charpentier / © Association La Clé des Portes)

First concert (presented by Clément Rochefort)
JS Bach: Cello Suite No.3 in C major, Schubert: String Quartet in C minor (Quartettsatz’) D.703, Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras, No.5 (first aria), Alexander Raskatov: Ode for St Valentine’s Day for eight violoncellos and a bottle of champagne, Dvořák: Piano Quintet No.2 in A major, Op.81.
Boris Andrianov (cello), Quatuor Van Kuijk, Serafima Liberman (soprano), Ludmila Berlinskaia (piano)
Thursday 16 October: Salle Cortot, Paris

Second concert (presented by Arthur Ancelle and Maria Matalaev)
Beethoven: String Quartet No.1 in F major, Op.18, Shostakovich: Piano Trio No.2 in E minor, Op.67, String Quartet No.9 in E flat major, Op.117, Prelude and Scherzo for String Octet, Op.11
Quatuor Danel, Kazakh State String Quartet, Mikhail Kopelman (violin), Boris Andrianov (cello), Ludmila Berlinskaia (piano)
Friday 17 October: Salle Cortot, Paris

Third concert (presented by Maria Matalaev and Arthur Ancelle)
Haydn: String Quartet No.29 in G major, Op.33, Brahms: Clarinet Trio in A minor, Op.114, Gaziza Zhubanova: String Quartet No.1, Prokofiev: Overture on Hebrew Themes, Op.34
Kazakh State String Quartet, Anastasia Ushakova (cello), Nicolas Baldeyrou (clarinet), Ludmila Berlinskaia (piano).
Saturday 18 October: Salle Cortot, Paris

Fourth concert (presented by Clément Rochefort and Maria Matalaev)
Schubert: Piano Quintet in A major, D.667 (The Trout), Rodion Shchedrin: Diptych for Violin Solo; Glinka: Grand Sextet for Piano and Strings in E flat major - Gran Sestetto originale
Mikhail Kopelman, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Loïc Rio (violins), Laurent Marfaing (viola), François Kieffer (cello), Grigory Kovalevsky (double-bass), Elisabeth Leonskaja (piano), Ludmila Berlinskaia (piano)
Sunday 19 October: Salle Cortot, Paris

Reviewed by Tony Cooper

An initiative of Valentin Berlinsky’s daughter, Ludmila Berlinskaia, together with her French-born husband, Arthur Ancelle, a couple of prominent international pianists based in Paris, they curated a brilliant and fitting programme in which to honour the memory of Valentin Berlinsky (known to many as ‘Mr Berlinsky’) in the year of his centenary.

Valentin Berlinsky in concert with his daughter Ludmila Berlinskaia

One hundred years after his birth, the musical world rightly celebrates the centenary of Valentin Berlinsky (1925-2008), an exceptional and gifted cellist, influential pedagogue, founded the Moscow Conservatoire Quartet whilst a student there in 1944. A decade later it was renamed the Borodin String Quartet in honour of Alexander Borodin, one of the founders of Russian chamber music. 

The Borodin Quartet’s cohesion and vision has survived many personnel changes over the years mainly due to the common ground shared by its players from their training at the Moscow Conservatoire while their style is characterised by an almost symphonic volume and a highly developed ability of phrasing thereby creating a unified, connected and consistent sound of tonal beauty and technical excellence largely due to the efforts, wisdom and stewardship, I feel, of Valentin Berlinsky, their cellist for six glorious, adventurous and thrilling decades. 

His father, a violinist and pupil of Leopold Auer, was his first teacher: Berlinsky began on the violin before turning to the cello, a transition that came to him with remarkable ease and natural affinity. He then entered the Central Music School in Moscow, studying with E. M. Gendli and went on to the Moscow Conservatoire, from which he graduated in 1947 after studying with S. M. Kozolupov. 

Alongside his performing career, Berlinsky taught chamber music first at the Ippolitov-Ivanov Institute (from 1947) and later at the Gnessin School of Music (from 1970) where he trained several generations of musicians and ensembles. He also founded major institutions such as the Dmitri Shostakovich International String Quartet Competition (1987-2004) and the Sakharov Festival in Nizhny Novgorod, a pioneering event combining classical music and human-rights advocacy. He contributed as well to the creation of ProQuartet in France alongside Georges Zeisel.

Becoming one of the Soviet Union's best-known and revered ensembles in the West during the Communist era (they performed at the funerals of both Stalin and Prokofiev who died on the same day - 5 March 1953) through multiple recordings as well as concert performances in the USA and continental Europe, members of the Borodin Quartet enjoyed a close and flourishing relationship with Shostakovich who personally consulted them on each of his 15 string quartets which they recorded as well as all of Beethoven’s quartets thus becoming widely known throughout the world for the quality and interpretations of both composers’ quartets.  

Borodin Quartet with Sviatoslav Richter & Grigory Kovalevsky

Fantasia Orchestra launch residency at Smith Square Hall with Birdsong-themed concert

Jess Gillam, Tom Fetherstonhaugh & Fantasia Orchestra in rehearsal  (Photo: Fantasia Orchestra)

In May last year I chatted conductor Tom Fetherstonhaugh [see my interview] about Fantasia Orchestra which he founded way back in 2016 (when he was still at school). During 2024 the orchestra had debuts at the BBC Proms, Northern Aldborough Festival and Ryedale Festival, and it continues to go from strength to strength. Fantasia Orchestra and Fetherstonhaugh launch their 2025/26 season with a concert at Smith Square Hall on 23 November which also marks the start of a four-concert residency at the hall. On 23 November, Fetherstonhaugh and the orchestra will be joined by soprano Lucy Crowe for Birdsong, a specially-curated programme inspired by the beauty of nature and of avian song. The programme includes Spring from Strauss' Four Last Songs, 'Dove Sono' from Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Berg's The Nightingale from his Seven Early Songs, music from Messiaen's Harawi plus Handel, Vivaldi, Haydn, Gerswhin and a lot more.

In February the orchestra is in Nottingham with saxophonist Jess Gillam for a programme that includes James MacMillan's Saxophone Concerto, and music by Steve Reich, Kate Bush, Bartok, Joni Mitchell and much more. 

In April they return to Smith Square with guest sitar player and composer Jasdeep Singh Degun for a programme that includes Degun's music alongside Rameau and Philip Glass including a movement from Degun's sitar concerto Arya. Still at Smith Square Hall, in may they are joined by pianist Steven Osborne for Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1 (with trumpeter Aaron Akugbo) alongside music by Bartok, Cole Porter, Gershwin and some of Shostakovich's lighter pieces. Their final concert of the residency features mezzo-soprano Niamh O'Sullivan (who has been singing the title role in Bizet's Carmen at ENO) in songs by Alma Mahler, Richard Strauss alongside instrumental music by Strauss and Elgar, plus songs by Ellington, Kern, Sondheim and Cole Porter.

Full details from the Fantasia Orchestra website.

Thinking about sound: Grieg's Lyric Pieces on a modern piano from Alexander Ullmann & on historic pianos with unequal temperament from Ziad Kreidy

Grieg: Lyric Pieces, Op. 71, Moods, Op. 73, Peer Gynt Suite, Op. 46, transcriptions of Songs, Op. 41 - Alexander Ullmann - Rubicon Classics RCD 1129

Grieg: Lyric Pieces, Op. 65, Op. 68, Op. 73 - Ziad Kreidy (historic piano) - Bandcamp

Two different approaches to Grieg's piano music - on a modern piano, played with intense poetic sensibility and on a selection of historic pianos with unequal temperament tuning that brings its own magic

Two recent discs have rather set me thinking about what sound we want for a particular composer when it comes to piano pieces. Do we always want the super-charged modern grand, or is something more period appropriate. 

And then there is a question of temperament.

Edvard Grieg's own Steinway grand piano from 1892 still exists at his former home, Troldhaugen and is still use, though the museum's website does not give much in the way of detail about the instrument and its tuning. However, Leif Ove Andsnes recorded a selection of Grieg's Lyric Pieces on it in 2002 for Warner Classics. 

The Lyric Pieces are central to two new recordings of Grieg's piano music. Grieg wrote 66 Lyric Pieces in total, publishing them in ten volumes from 1867 (Op. 12) to 1901 (Op. 71). 

This is music in which Leipzig-trained Grieg managed to encapsulate the music of his native land, mixing folk idioms with compositional techniques learned in Germany, yet with a freshness that is disarming. 

Into my inbox recently came two very different recordings of Grieg's piano music, focusing on the Lyric Pieces. Alexander Ullmann takes a modern, poetic approach  on Rubicon that will appeal to many, whilst musicologist Ziad Kreidy turns to historic pianos with unequal temperament tuning to very different effect on Bandcamp. This is not Kreidy's first venture into this territory, and last year he issued a recording of Grieg's Lyric Pieces, Opp. 12, 38, 43 & 47 on an Érard Upright Piano from 1867, also on Bandcamp.