Friday, December 5

Tag: Natalya Romaniw

Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony – Usher Hall
Scotland

Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony – Usher Hall

As part of the London Symphony Orchestra residency with the Edinburgh International Festival, A Sea Symphony drew a sold-out crowd to the Usher Hall. This landmark performance brought together the orchestra led by Sir Antonio Pappano with sonic leviathan Edinburgh Festival Chorus, for a night of sweeping musical ambition and deeply human emotional resonance. The two hours and five minutes including one interval performances commenced with an eight-minute glorious Nocturne that set an atmosphere of restrained anticipation. This was followed by a ten-minute violin solo from Vilde Frang, whose music instantly won over the hearts of the audience. She put out stunning technical accuracy coupled with warmth to secure a three-minute ovation—an initial highlight which promised much more magic a...
Die Walküre – Royal Ballet & Opera
London

Die Walküre – Royal Ballet & Opera

Following 2023’s Das Rheingold, conductor Antonio Pappano and director Barrie Kosky reunite to continue the mythical adventure with Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), the second work of Richard Wagner’s four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. On a stormy night, fate brings Siegmund (Stanislas de Barbeyrac) to the door of Sieglinde (Natalya Romaniw), the fearful wife of bully Hunding (Soloman Howard), unleashing a love with the power to end worlds. Meanwhile, in the realm of the gods, an epic battle ensues between their ruler Wotan (Christopher Maltman) and his rebellious daughter, Brünnhilde (Elisabet Strid), after his wife Fricka (Marina Prudenskaya) has laid her own law down to him, and the battle of the Valkyries – Helmwige (Maida Hundeling); Ortlinde (Katie Lowe); Gerhilde (Lee Bisset); ...
La Bohème Live at The Drive-In – ENO, East Car Park, Alexandra Palace
London

La Bohème Live at The Drive-In – ENO, East Car Park, Alexandra Palace

Monty Python used to say, and now for something completely different, and ne’er was a truer word said than with ENO director P.J. Harris’ contemporary English language adaptation of Puccini’s classic opera, and it is also transformed from its 19th C Parisian location to a modern-day encampment in a disused London car park, where we meet our four struggling hipsters: poet Rodolfo (David Butt Philip); painter Marcello (Roderick Williams); philosopher cum photographer Colline (William Thomas); and musician Schaunard (Benson Wilson), who arrives having had some good fortune. They are interrupted by Benoît (Trevor Eliot Bowes), a security guard, but cleverly trick him to avoid paying him his dues. Whilst the others leave, Rodolfo remains but is interrupted by a young lady needing a light for...