Concert and Theatre Reviews

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There have been a few concert and theatre reviews here lately, so I thought we could perhaps have a thread dedicated to them, as we do with the "last movie" thread. This could also be used for things shown at cinemas and on the various streaming services dedicated to music and theatre. It doesn't matter what genre.

On Tuesday I was in London at the Proms. Jakub Orlinski is really quite a talent. He's a countertenor specialising not just in braoque opera (which is the bread and butter for countertenors), but in unearthing rarities and recording world premieres of lost work. His albums are responsible for "getting me into" baroque opera in the last couple of years, and I was very much looking forward to his recital. He sang excellently, and the orchestra played excellently, but the presentation was pretentious and self-indulgent. There were fourteen excerpts on the programme but, instead of presenting them as individual pieces with applause etc in between, they were joined together to make one eighty minute "piece." For me, it made the event mind-numbingly boring, with no real structure and no real understanding of what he was singing about. Subtitles would have helped, or leaving the lights on in the Royal Albert Hall so that we could follow the translations in the programme. Orlinski also spent a surprising amount of time sitting or lying on the floor, which also didn't help considering you can't see the floor of the stage from most seats during the Proms because of the standing prommers in the way. It could have been so good, but just didn't work for me. Going by reviews, it appears to have been a love or hate event.

Tonight, however, I saw Le Tragedie de Carmen at Norwich Theatre Royal. This is a version of Carmen that strips the opera back to 90 minutes and just four singers, plus three speaking roles. This version was originally adapted by Peter Brook (director of the film Lord of the Flies) back in the early 1980s. I didn't go with a huge amount of enthusiasm, but it actually worked really well providing you weren't expecting a huge chorus and orchestra. The singers were really outstanding - some of the best singing in an opera out in the provinces(!) for some considerable time. It was really rather impressive, and made up for some of the disappointment at the Proms.