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1 week ago | 
musicomh.com | Sam Smith
The Early Opera Company conducted by Christian Curnyn at St George’s, Hanover Square. George Frideric Handel’s Floridante, HWV 14, with an Italian language libretto by Paolo Antonio Rolli, premiered at London’s King’s Theatre on 9 December 1721. Rolli’s libretto is based on Francesco Silvani’s own for Marc’Antonio Ziani’s La costanza in trionfo of 1696, and the fictitious story is set in ancient Persia.
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2 weeks ago | 
musicomh.com | Sam Smith
Inspired by the Baroque, but Romantic to its core. Felix Mendelssohn’s first oratorio St Paul, Op. 36 may not be well known in the United Kingdom, but it enjoys regular outings in Germany and was extremely popular in its day. Premiering on 22 May 1836 in Düsseldorf, within a year it had seen performances across Europe and in America in both the original German and an English translation.
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3 weeks ago | 
musicomh.com | Sam Smith
A 19th century rarity receives an outing at Cadogan Hall. Édouard Lalo’s Le roi d’Ys, with a libretto by Édouard Blau, is based on the old Breton legend of the downfall of Ys, a mythical city on the coast of Brittany that was swallowed up by the sea. There are various versions of the story, and the opera works from some of these to present its own concerning how the city came to be threatened.
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3 weeks ago | 
musicomh.com | Sam Smith
A cantata and oratorio receive the operatic treatment at the London Handel Festival. George Frideric Handel wrote the cantata Apollo e Dafne, HWV 122 and the oratorio The Choice of Hercules, HWV 69 around40 years apart in 1709-10 and 1750 respectively. In this London Handel Festival event presented by La Nuova Musica, directed by David Bates, and New English Ballet Theatre, both are staged.
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1 month ago | 
musicomh.com | Sam Smith
The big questions of life explored at St George’s, Hanover Square. George Frideric Handel wrote his first oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, HWV 46a in Rome in 1707. The tale it presents may be allegorical, but the arguments the characters put forward make them feel complex and consequently real.
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1 month ago | 
musicomh.com | Sam Smith
Operas from the 17th to the 21st centuries in the heart of the Cotswolds. Situated in the most beautiful surroundings in the Cotswolds, Longborough Festival Opera is arguably the only summer festival to put Richard Wagner at the centre of its operations. Last year it presented three complete Cycles of Der Ring des Nibelungen, alongside two further performances of Die Walküre, in productions directed by Amy Lane and conducted by Longborough’s Music Director Anthony Negus.
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1 month ago | 
musicomh.com | Sam Smith
OHP’s first production of a Wagner opera rubs shoulders with a wide variety of events. While people associate summer opera festivals with Glyndebourne, Garsington and the Granges, it is not necessary to travel outside London to experience one, thanks to Opera Holland Park. Only a ten minute walk from High Street Kensington station, it is somewhere to spend the evening rather than the entire day, but the beautiful setting still feels a long way from the hustle and bustle of a large metropolis.
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1 month ago | 
musicomh.com | Sam Smith
A world premiere in the heart of East Sussex. Jonathan Dove’s new community opera Uprising, with a libretto by April De Angelis, is a commentary on ecological catastrophe, and how activism must counter vehement opposition and straight forward apathy. It sees teenager Lola Green become concerned about the environment, although at first this leads to little more than her family (mother Angela, father Clive and sister Zoe) and fellow students labelling her as ‘weird’.
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1 month ago | 
musicomh.com | Sam Smith
J. S. Bach’s first revision of his work, with limited but engaging forces. Last year performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion, BWV 245 were more plentiful than ever since 2024 marked the tercentenary of the first performance in Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche. A year on and Solomon’s Knot has taken the opportunity to present the lesser known 1725 version, exactly 300 years after it was first heard.
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1 month ago | 
musicomh.com | Sam Smith
An enjoyable and worthwhile adaptation of the Jane Austen novel at the Silk Street Theatre, London. Jonathan Dove’s operatic version of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park premiered in 2011 at Boughton House in Northamptonshire. He originally wrote it for two players on the same piano, but was subsequently commissioned to orchestrate it for 13 instrumentalists by The Grange Festival, where it appeared in 2017.
