Philip Langridge, 1939-2010

Tributes to the electrifying British tenor who died last week

Britain's most communicative singing actor, lyric-dramatic tenor Philip Langridge has died at the age of 70. I offer a personal reminiscence, looking back on some of the greatest theatrical experiences of my life, and ask conductors Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Mark Elder, Edward Gardner and Vladimir Jurowski as well as director Richard Jones what Langridge's example has meant to them.

Philip Glass: Satyagraha, ENO/ LSO, Alsop, Barbican

SATYAGRAHA, ENO Given its second revival, is Glass's opera still a pile of trash?

English National Opera production proves Philip Glass is a pile of trash

It has always been a cornerstone of my personal philosophy that beauty and insight can be found in the very lowest of common denominators. That Big Brother, Friends, Love It magazine or Paris Hilton provide revelations about life that are of as much consequence, of as much wonder, as any offered up by the classic pantheon. That that which the people respond to must and usually does have plenty of merit lurking within it.

Lucia di Lammermoor, ENO

Sets, costumes and an Italianate tenor save a museum-piece opera

Is Donizetti's fustian operatic mash-up of Sir Walter Scott worth staging seriously? On CD, stupenda Sutherland and divina Callas continue to give us goosebumps with their darting, florid stabs at poor mad Lucia. If the difficult-to-achieve match of bel canto and dramatic intensity rests only with the lead tenor, as it did last night, what's left? Well, this revival of David Alden's 2008 production still looks stunning, well in line with ENO's high visual style so far this season.

Ockham's Razor, London International Mime Festival

Mesmerising British company tell human stories in the air

“Don’t look down,” comes the exhortation from somewhere on the floor. "Look ahead." I am testing out a new bit of kit, a large wooden cylinder encased in a metal frame, suspended via ropes and pulleys from a high ceiling. The diameter is big enough for me to be able to stand up and walk. Or not. The inclination is to watch your feet as, like a hamster, you power the rotation of the drum. Trouble is if you look down you lose your balance. So I look ahead and take grandmother’s footsteps which are barely strong enough to get the thing moving at all. "Take bigger strides," comes more advice. But it's no use.

Classical and Opera 2000-9: The Highs and Lows

The ups and downs of a musical decade

 

No great new movements or radically transformational figures emerged to dominate classical music in the Noughties (not even him up there). Just one small nagging question bedevilled us: will the art form survive? Well, it has. What appeared to be a late 20th-century decline in audience interest in the classical tradition was in fact a consumer weariness with the choices on offer.

Opera for Everybody: The Story of English National Opera

ENO's rocky road to all-inclusiveness gets an easy ride from Susie Gilbert

Love it or loathe it, the powerhouse effect is back at English National Opera. The era which gave its name to the sobriquet, that challenging time in the 1980s and early 1990s when Davids Pountney, Alden and Fielding skewed the stage and Mark Elder matched their vision in the pit, now has an equal. The ENO calendar year has just ended with Rupert Goold's Chinese restaurant shake-up of a Turandot , everything we saw beautifully thought out and focused to knife-edge brilliance, and every sound emanating from the ENO Orchestra and Chorus under Ed Gardner sensual-perfect. Alas, the kind of vigorous debate it's generated is hardly reflected in Susie Gilbert's hard-working, diligent history of the company.

Messiah, ENO

Community spirit at the Coliseum

There are so many ways a dramatic production of Messiah can go wrong it is almost unbearable to think about it. Certainly, there was a palpable buzz of nervousness in the Coliseum about last night’s audience as they took their seats. Did English National Opera really think it could pull it off? Could it avoid the pitfalls into triteness that surely lurk at every corner? How would the chorus manage it? And please God, let it be better than Glyndebourne’s 2007 St Matthew Passion.

Production gallery: Duke Bluebeard's Castle, ENO

Johan Persson photographed the frightening new production of Bartók's chiller

English National Opera's new production of Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle is photographed here by Johan Persson. Directed by Daniel Kramer, designed by Giles Cadle and lit by Peter Mumford, it updates Charles Perrault's 1697 fairytale to a horrific modern reality. Clive Bayley and Michaela Martens sing Duke Bluebeard and Judith. See Ismene Brown's review.

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Duke Bluebeard's Castle/Rite of Spring, ENO

A masterly Bluebeard, where 'relevant' opera becomes revelant

There are horrors in the world so vile that few of us want to think about them. None more so than such cases as Josef Fritzl - or Jaycee Lee Dugard, or Arcedio Alvarez, or Raymond Gouardo, or Wolfgang Priklopil, or Marc Dutroux... but you get the picture. Cases where men abduct girls and turn them into sex slaves and father multiple children by them, often incestuously, hiding them in garages, basements, behind walls, sometimes for decades undiscovered, sometimes murdering them. Mostly you read that it happened, you shudder, and try not to think more about it.

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