Total reviews: 32
Positive reviews
Mixed reviews
Negative reviews
24 February 2020
Yet, after initial vim and vigour, it soon felt as if the electric plug had been disconnected. Fruit-laden carts rolling sadly across the stage were unlikely to harness the inebriating currents of Rossini’s score. The biggest problem was cumbersome playing.
Read the original review7 November 2019
The static nature of the staging limits its impact, but this is mitigated by the glorious aural wash provided by conductor Franz Welser-Möst. Lithe and suave, he assuredly steers Strauss’s leviathan score through rapturous climaxes, impressionistic hues and bellicose eruptions.
Read the original review23 October 2019
That was owed partly to the brilliance of Robert Carsen’s production, which relocates Nicola Francesco Haym’s libretto, depicting rival Roman factions in civil-war-torn ancient Egypt, to a modern-day Middle East occupied by western armed forces.
Read the original review12 August 2019
The singers rise above it all. Salome Jicia burst on to the scene at the ROF three years ago. Rather than being regal, her Semiramide combines vocal brilliance and blade with edgy dramatisation in an everyday picture of emotional strain.
Read the original review19 June 2019
The Herculean Fabio Sartori packed a mighty vocal punch, fitting for this all-guns-blazing production, and showed he is acquiring stage presence to match the brawn. Michele Pertusi made the thankless role of Massimiliano engaging, but Massimo Cavalletti’s voice was a size too small for the dastardly Francesco.
Read the original review25 April 2019
Even Franz Welser-Möst, a Strauss specialist, drew flavourless playing. It is a sign of the remarkable quality of the score — a mix of neoclassical nobility, folkish rusticity and Wagnerian radiance — that it nevertheless inspired.
Read the original review28 February 2019
Gergiev did not disappoint. Basking in the glow of his music-stand lamp, his fingers fluttering restlessly, he drew a sound of deep intensity, as if the spirit of his homeland — “the power of the black earth”, Mussorgsky wrote — had been made to course through the score.
Read the original review21 February 2019
Un hommage digne de ce nom, somme toute, à Claudio Abbado, cinq ans après son décès. Si l'on considère que la direction de feu le chef d'orchestre de La Cenerentola se distinguait par sa remarquable clarté rythmique, alors l'interprétation de son successeur ici, Ottavio Dantone, sort incontestablement du même moule.
Read the original review2 October 2018
The whole is a metatheatrical investigation into the nature of Le Trouvère and its difference from Il trovatore. The French text, mellower than the Italian, was lost in the washy acoustic. But Roberto Abbado, debuting as the festival’s music director, provided Gallic finesse with elegant playing from the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna.
Read the original review2 October 2018
Fischer proved this performance's driving force. The conductor delivered a pacey, full-throttle reading, recounting the Victor Hugo-inspired plot, about Castillian noblemen, rugged bandits and honourable pacts, with unrelenting vigour and vivacity.
Read the original review23 January 2018
Thankfully, there are decent musical performances to enjoy. Daniela Fally sparkles as Adele, Peter Sonn sings nicely as Eisenstein, and Elena Maximova almost convinces us that Prince Orlofsky should be played as a woman rather than a trouser role.
Read the original review9 December 2017
But it was Eyvazov who, having conquered palpable nerves, won the hearts of the loggionisti. His clarion voice and declamatory style sounded authentically veristic, while masterly crafting of the Italian text also found uncommon nuance.
Read the original review8 September 2017
Bechtolf dapples this magical world with realism.
Read the original review