Mark Davoren, Author at North West End UK

11Jan

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

La Traviata – Manchester Opera House

Ellen Kent’s production of this much-loved opera is aided by its sumptuous set and costume design as it relishes its traditional 19th Century roots and delivers a truly musical feast to dine upon. At its heart lies a love story which draws upon Alexandre Dumas the Younger’s real-life doomed love affair with well-known courtesan, Marie Duplessis. We open with Violetta (Alyona Kistenyova), aided by her friend Flora (Natalia Matveeva) hosting a lavish party where she is introduced by Gastone (Nicolae Cebanu) to his friend, Alfredo Germont (Giorgio Meladze), a fervent admirer, who is more concerned for her failing health than her escort, Barone Douphal (Eugeniu Ganea). When Alfredo declares his love for her, she wonders if he could be the one amidst her desire to be free to live her life. ...

9Jan

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

REVIEWS

Nabucco – Met Opera Live in HD

Verdi’s biblical story is brought to life in biblical proportions with this fifth revival from director J. Knighten Smit’s of the late Elijah Moshinsky’s original production complete with John Napier’s impressive set design taking full advantage of the stage’s turntable. In Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, the terrified Hebrews await the arrival of the conquering Babylonian king, Nabucco (George Gagnidze), who is renowned for his cruelty. The Hebrew high priest Zaccaria (Dmitry Belosselskiy) has kidnapped Nabucco’s daughter, Fenena (Maria Barakova) entrusting her safe keeping to Ismaele (SeokJong Baek), and their love for each other is soon revealed. Nabucco’s elder daughter, Abigaille (Liudmyla Monastyrska), is also in love with Ismaele and offers to save the Jewish people if he will giv...

Florencia en el Amazonas – Met Opera Live in HD

10Dec

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

REVIEWS

Florencia en el Amazonas – Met Opera Live in HD

With Marcela Fuentes-Berain’s libretto inspired by the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, Mexican composer Daniel Catán’s 1996 opera is an enchanting story about love with Mary Zimmerman’s new production establishing the story through a series of vignettes where we meet some of the passengers embarking on a trip to Manaus along the Amazon River, all with the goal of seeing the famed diva Florencia Grimaldi (Ailyn Pérez) perform at the legendary opera house. Unbeknown to them, she is actually travelling incognito among them on her own personal quest into the past to seek out her lover, Cristóbal, a butterfly catcher, who has gone missing in the jungle. Love as the recurring central theme is explored further through the other passengers: Paula (Nancy Fabiola Herrera) and Alvaro (M...

9Dec

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Little Red – Theatre Porto

Kevin Dyer’s delightful re-imagining of this tale as old as time is wonderfully brought to life under the direction of Nina Hajiyianni with memorable musical composition by Patrick Dineen to keep us on the right path as Little Red (Fatima Jahara) heads into the forest with the blessing of her mother (Anoush Kendrick) to visit her sickly Grandma (Francesca Anderson), but on the way she encounters a rather hungry Wolfie (Stephanie Greer) who has other plans for her. There is a surreal quality to this re-telling and the all-female cast deliver inspired performances with Anderson, Greer, and Kendrick also taking on ensemble roles as the journey unravels with lots of humour and the right amount of scare, wrapped up in song and some outstanding choreography. Anderson’s Grandma is instantly re...

20Nov

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Opera North: La rondine – The Lowry

The curtains opens to 1920’s Paris in director James Hurley’s take on Puccini’s take of the La Traviata tale and with the backdrop of Leslie Travers rich and glamorous set, suitably illuminated by Paule Constable and Ben Pickersgill, we meet Magda (Galina Averina), the mistress of a wealthy banker, Rambaldo (Philip Smith), but when the poet Prunier (Elgan Llŷr Thomas) reads her palm and predicts that like la rondine – the swallow – she will travel south in her pursuit of happiness, the die is cast for what is to come. When she meets the young Ruggero (Sebastien Guèze), glamour soon turns to decadence as she follows him to the nightclub Bulliers where they fall in love and decide to run away to the south of France, and with Prunier equally smitten with Magda’s maid, Lisette (Claire Lees), t...

Opera North: Masque of Might – The Lowry

17Nov

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North West

Opera North: Masque of Might – The Lowry

Sir David Pountney’s exuberant production is billed as ‘eco-entertainment’ and it certainly takes re-purposing to a whole new level with its glorified collage of Purcell’s semi-operatic musical form of the 17th Century masque lyrically enhanced to explore a range of contemporary themes including the rise of strongman leaders and the devastation of climate change, and how these may be rightly overcome. By its very nature and whilst sung, the piece is narrative in form and whilst merging various disparate musical moods, by and large it holds together quite well with the assistance of side panel surtitles in English of an English libretto. Although its success can be very much attributed to the genius fusion of the original composer and the adapted libretto by its director, it is also unfo...

16Nov

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North West

Opera North: Falstaff – The Lowry

The rainbow-striped curtain rises on Opera North’s sustainable take on Verdi’s final masterpiece, a comic opera drawn from Shakespeare in director Olivia Fuchs’ re-imagined riotous and rampant romp that serves up satire, slapstick, and stags along the way. Roguish knight Falstaff (Henry Waddington) is down on his luck, residing in the car park of the Garter Inn and reliant upon its Host (Gordon D. Shaw) to keep him in good spirits of any kind! When he informs Bardolph (Colin Judson) and Pistol (Dean Robinson) that he intends to seduce Alice Ford (Kate Royal) and Meg Page (Helen Évora) they refuse to deliver his letters, so he throws them out, turning to his assistant Robin (Robert Gardiner) instead. When the letters are eventually received, Mistress Quigley (Louise Winter), Meg, Alice, ...

The Signalman – Metal Culture, Liverpool

6Nov

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North West

The Signalman – Metal Culture, Liverpool

From ArtsGroupie, the producers of Kitty: Queen of the Washhouse and A Portrait of William Roscoe, comes a slice of winter terror with a new adaptation from David Griffiths, who also directs, of the much-loved Charles Dickens supernatural classic, The Signalman. Following the arrival of a somewhat lost and larger than life visitor (John Maguire) at a remote signal box on a dark winter night, the solitary railway signalman (Zoran Blackie) tells him of a spectre that has been haunting him with each appearance preceding a tragic event on the railway on which the signalman works, a deep cutting near a tunnel entrance on a lonely stretch of the railway line where he controls the movement of the passing trains and is alerted to danger by his fellow signalmen via the telegraph and alarms. T...

The Woman Who Crossed the Road – Theatre Porto

31Oct

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North West

The Woman Who Crossed the Road – Theatre Porto

The uprising in Iran is just over a year old. Women are still demonstrating, refusing to wear their headscarves and shouting ‘Woman. Life. Freedom’. At the same time, the government is hitting back, often literally: in the past week, a sixteen-year-old girl died suffering from brain damage after an alleged altercation with morality police who had assaulted her for not wearing a hijab. Performed by Najmeh Shoara, born in Iran but forced to leave to keep herself safe and sane, she is in the UK for the first time to tell this story which, written and directed by Kevin Dyer, is based on the true stories of the many women forced to leave places and start over again. Whilst pre-dating the tragic death of Mahsa Amini in Iran in September 2022, it was updated to reflect its Iranian origins and ...

Brendan Son of Dublin – The Tung Auditorium

30Oct

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North West

Brendan Son of Dublin – The Tung Auditorium

In the 100th anniversary year of the birth of the infamous Brendan Behan, Fatdan Productions present the second of their musical dramas focusing on the ‘outsider’, following their 2021 play on Oscar Wilde, as part of the Liverpool Irish Festival. Written by John Merrigan and with music and lyrics by Danielle Morgan, director and visual artist Professor Pamela Howard OBE presents a semi-staged production to explore the enigma that is Behan. With the simplest of staging that includes three stools, three chairs, and a clothes rack, Behan (Pádraig Lynch) steps through the key phases of his life from impassioned young Republican through to literary lush, with supporting characters portrayed by an ensemble (Gillian McCafferty; John Newcombe; Jack Klaff; Ann Marcuson; Ross Scarfield) and the s...