David Truslove

United Kingdom

Contributor at Freelance

Contributor at Bachtrack

Portfolio musician - choral specialist, teacher, writer, composer - http://t.co/EZw4T03tPl

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Articles

Searingly powerful Peter Grimes from Welsh National Opera

2 weeks ago | operatoday.com | David Truslove

With vivid memories of WNO’s outstanding Death in Venice last season, expectations ran high for this new production of Benjamin Britten’s operatic masterpiece. We were not disappointed, and largely the result of a seasoned cast, an augmented chorus and some terrific playing from the orchestra under the inspired direction of Tomáš Hanus.
Superlative Performances from Vache Baroque at Magdalen College, Oxford

1 month ago | operatoday.com | David Truslove

As part of the Music in Oxford series, the award-winning music ensemble Vache Baroque produced an artfully conceived programme built around Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis letter of 1897, written during his incarceration in Reading Gaol for ‘gross indecency’.
A trio of exiled composers: Petrenko and the RPO at the Royal Festival Hall

1 month ago | bachtrack.com | David Truslove

As part of its “Lights in the Dark” series, bravura, brilliance and playful invention brought distinction to this Royal Philharmonic Orchestra programme featuring émigré composers born within the tail end of the 19th century, yet each finding a home in the United States in the 20th. How fascinating it was to hear such stylistic variety from Bartók, Korngold and Rachmaninov whose three works were conceived within a decade of one another.
Mixed results from Dalia Stasevska's trio of 20th-century works

1 month ago | bachtrack.com | David Truslove

Without any obvious connecting theme other than a trio of 20th-century works written within a few years of each other, this BBC Symphony concert at the Barbican drew together a choral rarity and two popular orchestral gems. With such strong vocal, pianistic and orchestral contrasts, it all promised to be an exciting evening. And so much of it proved to be.
A Captivating new production of Pelléas et Mélisande at Opéra Bastille

1 month ago | operatoday.com | David Truslove

Premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1902 and closely based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s play, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande is renowned for its collision between “its severest realism and the most impalpable dream world”, (Pierre Boulez). Its shadowy setting framing the plot’s love triangle is soaked in an illusory, mysterious atmosphere.
Charpentier from La Nuova Musica and Voktett Hannover at Wigmore Hall

2 months ago | operatoday.com | David Truslove

Under the direction of Baroque specialist David Bates, La Nuova Musica joined forces with the German a capella ensemble Voktett Hannover to reveal two sides of French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Sacred and secular offerings from the late 17th century illustrated the composer’s synthesis of French sensibility and Italian passion, its blend generated from an extended visit to Rome in the late 1660s when he studied with Giocomo Carissimi.
Spotlight on Carissimi from Vox Luminis

2 months ago | operatoday.com | David Truslove

Two death sentences; one fatal, one reprieved, and a near-fatal encounter with a whale. These events formed the central focus of dramatic performances by the Belgium ensemble Vox Luminis in their exploration of vocal music by Giocomo Carissimi. The early Baroque master is justifiably best known for Jephte (published 1650), one of ten or so oratorios written for performance during Lent while he was employed as maestro di cappella at the Jesuit Seminary in Rome.
Compelling performances from OperaUpClose: Riders to the Sea & The Last Bit of the Moon

2 months ago | operatoday.com | David Truslove

What does one perform with Vaughan Williams’s seldom heard one act tragedyabout a mother who has lost her last surviving son somewhere off the west coastof Ireland? Drawn from J.M. Synge’s doom-laden play set on the Aran Islandsand premiered by students at the Royal College of Music in 1937, Riders to theSea has occasionally been partnered by Holst’s Savitra and even moreinfrequently with rarities such as Darius Milhaud’s Le Pauvre Matelot andLennox Berkeley’s A Dinner Engagement.
A powerful and unsettling Aida at the Royal Opera House

2 months ago | operatoday.com | David Truslove

An empty stage enclosing grey walls of a concrete bunker. This is the initial impression we have of Robert Carsen’s Aida, presented at the Royal Opera House in a first revival by Gilles Rico. The cheerless staging does not so much convey a barren Egyptian desert but suggests, in its non-specific anywhere locale, an unnamed modern-day totalitarian state, an amalgamation comprising three-parts United States, Russia and China.
Georgian born and Italian-trained singer George Andguladze debuts at the Royal Opera House

Jan 28, 2025 | operatoday.com | David Truslove

David Truslove talks to the operatic bass George Andguladze who makes his Covent Garden debut as the King of Egypt in Verdi’s Aida. Conducted by Daniel Oren, this is the first revival of Robert Carsen’s 2022 production. DT In 2017 the English language newspaper Georgia Today described you as “a renowned and exceptionally young Bass who, at the age of 32, has already conquered pinnacles in the world opera”. To what are they referring? GA This refers to my achievements in Italy.