Katie Mitchell is a director who divides her audience. Some champion the probing psychology of her shows, their meticulous, realist visuals, their staunchly feminist agenda. Others balk at what they see as a prefab, one-size-fits-all approach. But whatever your camp, when Mitchell finds a show to suit her inherent sympathies the result is unassailable. This Alcina, originally staged for the 2015 Aix-en-Provence Festival, is the director at her very best – a marriage of concept and psychology so instinctive, so exhilarating in its invention, that it’s impossible to imagine it bettered. Unpacking the limits of power in all its forms – love, magic, violence, authority – Handel’s opera is one of his most probing emotional portraits, and a piece ripe for Mitchell’s gaze. She pulls back the curtain on Alcina’s sorcery, revealing the blunt, unpalatable mechanisms behind her illusions, showing us the woman not the witch. Chloe Lamford’s designs place us in a decaying doll’s house of a set. Rooms are spread over two floors, but only the central salon is fully lit. Within this magic space Alcina (Patricia Petibon) and Morgana (Anna Prohaska) seduce and subdue their lovers, glorying in their youth and beauty…. Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

The socially savvy mezzo supports many causes, but after the Paris attacks she’s decided to go on the record.

We’re so used to hearing Handel recitals from sopranos or countertenors that one from a tenor is somewhat of a novelty, and we have to go back to Mark Padmore’s terrific 2007 release As Steals the Morn for something comparable. Basses fare even less well, and Bryn Terfel’s Handel Arias is now almost 20-years old. So English tenor Allan Clayton’s recital focusing on songs either written for or sung by the great Handelian tenor John Beard (c.1715-1791), who seems not only to have had a fine voice but acting skills to match, is most welcome. Beard created some of Handel’s most famous roles, including Samson, of which there are excerpts from not only that version but William Boyce’s; there are also arias from Ariodante, Alcina and Semele, as well as from Judas Maccabaeus, Samson, Jephtha, Alexander’s Feast and more. For As steals the morn from L’Allegro, Clayton is joined by soprano Mary Bevan; for Happy Pair from Alexander’s Feast, the Choir of Classical Opera; the recording opens with Sol nel mezzo risona del core from Il Pastor Fido, in which Bevan duets with James Eastaway’s sweetly plangent oboe. Of course the orchestral playing under the ever-musical direction… Continue reading Get…

Check out this exclusive preview of the opera star’s In War and Peace: Harmony Through Music. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

★★★★½ Tognetti’s crack band backs classy Russian mistress of the roulades. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

This 2012 production was the centrepiece of Cecilia Bartoli’s first season as Artistic Director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. It’s a pleasure to note that Andreas Scholl has retained almost all his tonal beauty over 20 years now. Costumed as a European Union bureaucrat, his towering physical presence and wonderful sound befits the stature of the role. Christophe Dumaux exudes danger and menace as Tolomeo. His nemesis, Sesto, usually comes across as a dithering ninny but Philippe Jaroussky takes hold of the role, his youthful look suggesting a boy out of his depth in a pool of circling sharks. Anne Sophie von Otter has gravitas as aging beauty Cornelia, singing with such artistry as to conceal any marks of time. Bartoli’s Cleopatra is a knockout; a big, blousy Elizabeth Taylor portrayal sung with flamboyance in triumph and tenderness in defeat. The big tragic arias are heart-rending showstoppers, the artist spinning endless strands of silken tone. In contrast there’s Bartoli in frizzy blonde wig astride a missile. Once seen it’s difficult to unsee. And there’s the rub – wonderful musical performance in an ugly mess of a production. I counted off the directorial clichés; No 7 – dancers in army fatigues,…

Britten and Handel do the trick as the 25-year-old countertenor from NSW carries off The Mathy for 2016. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Glyndebourne hit leads Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy’s inaugural programme – but don’t expect blood and dildos. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Boston Early Music Festival singers and period instrument players, co-directed by lutenists Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, are in cracking form on this studio recording of Handel’s buoyant pastoral. The vocal ensemble are exceptional, especially in their opening number O the Pleasure of the Plains (which always reminds me of For unto us a Child is born from Messiah). Handel wrote Acis and Galatea for the Duke of Chandos to celebrate his marriage and the building of his lavish mansion, the Cannons, in Middlesex. The house had its own orchestra as well as extensive gardens with the latest water features. It didn’t survive for long, however, for within 20 years it was demolished and its features sold off when Chandos’s fortune took a dive in the South Sea Bubble. In Ovid’s tale, the shepherd Acis is metamorphosed into a fountain by his lover Galatea after the jealous cyclops Polyphemus launches a boulder which crushes him. Thus the gardens of Cannons made the perfect setting for this pastoral tale. Handel was briefly the Duke’s resident composer while things were quiet in London (and where he was having trouble managing to stage his Italian operas). Hats off to the excellent soloists, tenor…

★★★★☆ Grieves-Smith serves up an energetic mix of old and new. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Music has always been great propaganda, but over the centuries Britain’s royalty have turned it into an art form. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Sterling vocals help audience acquire three different tastes.