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“…Emilio Sagi's elegant, minimal and warm-hearted staging gives it a full-scale operatic stylishness that is captured vividly for disc… Torroba's score pours enticing melody over traditional dance rhythms… Under Jesús López Cobos it sparkles with woodwind and percussion colour. Nancy Herrera's eloquent mezzo shines in heartfelt duets with both José Bros - a fluent, suave tenor... and... Domingo, who typically paces himself to intensify along with the drama.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2007 ****

“David McVicar's 2005 staging, revived the following summer, provoked a deal of contrasting views among the critical fraternity but was adored by the Glyndebourne public. Chief cause of their delight was the overtly sexual, high-hoofing performance of Cleopatra by the irrepressible Danielle de Niese (who is accorded a delightful 22-minute narrative on her Glyndebourne experience among the extras here). Her vocal command and stage presence are spectacular in every sense, and from her first aria she utterly seduces her audience. McVicar took advantage of her attractive skills to build the opera around her personality. We are here in the high noon of British imperialism and the Ottoman Empire, with Caesar more like a late-19th-century English general than a Roman emperor, and with the Egyptian milieu heavily underlined by milling extras, now always a not-altogether welcome feature of a McVicar production. They clutter the stage and draw attention away from the principals, although one has to admit that the highly disciplined and often captivating choreography is brilliantly executed within Robert Jones's exotic sets. McVicar does at least allow the moments of serious drama to be played out without undue interference – such as the deeply moving duet that closes Act 1 and Cleopatra's 'Piangerò'. Finally it has to be said that only Glyndebourne allows for the rehearsal time to prepare such a complex and ingenious staging. The musical side of things is equally well prepared and thought-through under William Christie's knowledgeable and commanding direction. He manages to balance with the same finesse and care the light and serious parts of the score, even if his love for Handel leads him to a few self-indulgently slow tempi. The OAE play lovingly and with period skills for him. By the time of this DVD recording, near the end of the run, the whole thing moves with eloquence matched by elegance. De Niese sings her airy numbers as to the manner born, seconded by expertly erotic dancing. She manages most of the emotional substance of her sadder arias, but they sometimes seem wanting in the tonal weight ideally required. Sarah Connolly's thoroughly believable Caesar is sung with her firm tone and well schooled mastery of Handelian style, including subtle embellishments. This wilful and imperial Caesar manages to change moods as his music demands. Some of the most accomplished and tender Handelian singing comes from Patricia Bardon's moving Cornelia and Angelika Kirchschlager's concerned Sesto, although the latter does slightly overplay the character's seemingly neurotic state of mind following his father's brutal death. The young countertenor Christophe Dumaux playing Tolomeo is suitably brat-like and spoilt. He, like most of the cast, fulfils all the stringent demands of this very physical staging. Christopher Maltman makes Achilles as nasty as he should be. The sense of teamwork all round is confirmed in the interviews included in the extras. Robin Lough's DVD direction is faultless.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“La fille mal gardée is sheer perfection, Nuñez and Acosta are unsurpassable respectively in the feminine grace and masculine confidence of Ashton's Lise and Colas, and their mimetic skills are delicious” BBC Music Magazine, September 2008 *****

“The Royal Ballet’s present revival makes much of its vigorous characters, its brilliantly virtuosic solos and duets…[Marianela Nunez] gives the swift, intricate footwork as gorgeously as I have ever seen it. …Nunez is an excellent match for Carlos Acosta’s whizzing solos and his cheerful eagerness as her admirer Colas. …Altogether, a terrific show.” The Stage

“curiosity is aroused for adult and child alike from the first notes of Jonathan Dove's lavish and fantastical new opera genuinely for all age-groups. The scary moments are balanced by the joie de vivre of Alasdair Middleton's witty libretto and Martin Duncan's imaginative staging. Onstage virtually throughout, Victoria Simmonds conveys Pinocchio's flitting moods, from unthinkingly selfish to equally thoughtless acts of love, open-eyed enthusiasm to despondent sulks, with charm and verve. Plaudits should also go to the chorus, whose scenes are always visually and sonically spectacular, while the stunning surround sound of the DVD capturing every detail of Opera North's bold undertaking.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2009 *****

“The story of Pinocchio, as told by Carlo Collodi, is best known through the Disney cartoon version, an equivocal movie generally less sympathetic than other Disney features, but giving a graphic if partial view of the story. Jonathan Dove with his librettist, Alasdair Middleton, in this operatic version in two substantial acts gives a much fuller idea of the story starting with the moment when Gepetto the woodman finds a talking log in the forest. Gepetto is about to chop it up when it speaks to him demanding that he preserve it, later demanding that he should bring out the secret it contains, nothing less than the puppet, Pinocchio, who kicks him as his legs appear. Dove tells the story in brief scenes, 12 in Act 1, nine in Act 2, which carry the story on swiftly and effectively, going on to one sequence involving a circus – cue for pastiche circus music – also one when Pinocchio and Gepetto are trapped inside a whale, from which they escape thanks to Pinocchio's cunning in realising that this asthmatic animal is asleep with its mouth open. Generally the scenes follow the development of Pinocchio from rebellious puppet to kind and considerate boy. Dove's writing characteristically is colourful and vigorous, with inventive instrumentation, as when Pinocchio refuses to pull a cart when asked by a stranger, denying that he is a donkey – at which Dove has the orchestra briefly making a hee-haw sound. Dove's sharp, jazzy syncopations add to the attractions of the writing, which is generally easily lyrical. This, believe it or not, is Dove's 21st opera, though few are as long or ambitious as this one, which was written for Opera North and given its premiere in 2007. The performance, filmed live, is excellent, with a cast which includes a number of the singers discovered by the Peter Moores Foundation, and conducted very ably by David Parry, the Foundation's regular conductor. A very welcome issue of a most attractive new opera.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Doctor Atomic centres on the hours before the first detonation of the atomic bomb… Peter Sellars's film of the opera is expressionistic, claustrophobic, sometimes deliberately out of focus. The sound quality is exceptionally good, as is the singing and playing under conductor Lawrence Renes.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2008 *****

“Gerald Finley carries the problems of the world on his shoulders as Oppenheimer and the Netherlands Philharmonic and Lawrence Renes play like it’s the best score since Fidelio.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2008

“The heart throbs...in scenes featuring Jessica Rivera as Oppenheimer’s wife, the opera’s symbol of warmth, sensuousness, and hope. But these are moments: the overall tone stays cool, intellectual. We watch as observers, not participants. Sellars directed this TV version himself. There are virtues here, and vices. Cinema aficionados dismayed by static shots may revel in the nervous visuals, the quick editing and close-ups (you grow very familiar with Rivera’s tongue). But by fidgeting so much, Sellars the film director often works against the interests of Sellars the stage director. Body movements are truncated; the patterns of Lucinda Childs’s choreography get lost. All too rarely do we grasp the big picture and enjoy the full impact of Adrianne Lobel’s stark sets, with desert hills silhouetted and the bomb, cradled with wires, looming overhead like a malevolent planet. Finley, Rivera, Eric Owens and the rest of the cast are always as eloquent as the opera allows, and Lawrence Renes’s conducting is on the ball. Extras are disappointing: too much of Sellars holding forth, not enough on the production” The Times, 1st August 2008 ***

“That both these productions work is largely due to Jesús López Cobos's theatrically vital and style-sensitive conducting and two strong casts.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2007 ****

“It is a genuine pleasure to welcome a new production of Cav and Pag that presents the contrasting tales of jealousy and infidelity with sincerity and dramatic flair. Giancarlo del Monaco and his designer, Johannes Leiacker, set Cavalleria in a stark townscape of white painted buildings and masonry, the black-clad Sicilian women silhouetted under the fierce sunlight. The Easter Hymn is made all the more tense by a parade of penitents dragging a cross. Violeta Urmana and Vincenzo La Scola are well paired as Santuzza and Turridu, their confrontation interrupted by the unusually attractive Lola of Dragana Jugovich. Marco di Felice conveys the terrible pain that Alfio feels on learning of his wife's affair – the fight between him and Turridu is played out onstage, the challenge taken up when a glass of wine is emptied on to the floor. The great Viorica Cortez is a dignified Mamma Lucia. As Turridu's body is carried away at the end, the scene changes seamlessly into the opening of Pagliacci (the Prologue to which is sung from the stalls right at the start of the evening by Carlo Guelfi). From the 1890s setting of Cav we have moved forward 50 years, and the travelling players arrive in a lorry, with posters for the show on the outside – the mood is a bit like Fellini's LaStrada. From the outset, this Pagliacci becomes a really painful story to watch. María Bayo is superb as Nedda, tough and wilful, but trapped by the overbearing Canio of Vladimir Galouzine. His voice is very baritonal in quality, the high notes not always easily achieved, but what tremendous authority and passion he brings to the part; he really has it in him to become the leading dramatic tenor of our time. All the other parts are well cast and the crowd scenes are beautifully handled. Jesús López-Cobos leads the Madrid forces in a performance that could not easily be surpassed anywhere nowadays. Angel Luis Ramírez, deserves high praise for capturing Del Monaco's intense staging so well.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Director Johan Simons's take on Die Entführung is summed up by a remark in one of the accompanying interviews: 'At the end people see that the Pasha is a much better match for Konstanze than Belmonte is.' Other productions have suggested a mutual attraction between the heroine and her oriental captor. Simons carries this to extremes. His staging is dominated by Konstanze's inner struggle between her loyalty to her betrothed and her disturbing feelings for the man who, we sense, has awakened her sexually. Far from resisting his advances, she and the youthful, half-westernised Pasha, subtly and believably portrayed by Steven van Watermeulen, can hardly keep their hands off each other during her opening aria; and the longing she sings of in 'Traurigkeit' here takes on a very different meaning. Yet even in the final vaudeville, exchanged glances with the Pasha suggest an undertow of regret for romantic passion and exotic adventure sacrificed in the cause of duty. While there are irritating details in Simons's modern-dress production, it is psychologically credible, often compelling. Laura Aikin vividly portrays Konstanze's fluctuating emotions in dialogue and aria. If 'Traurigkeit' ideally needs a softer, more plangent colour, she makes 'Martern aller Arten' a graphic embodiment of her conflicting feelings of desire and guilt, charging the stratospheric coloratura with a sense of neurotic desperation. In Simons's conception Belmonte is an anxious, self-absorbed ditherer, understandably fazed by Konstanze's initial coolness towards him. Wearing a more-or-less permanently bemused air, Edgaras Montvidas sings his four arias with firm, sappy tone, if no special grace of phrasing. Michael Smallwood makes a likeable, resourceful Pedrillo, cheerfully enduring Osmin's sadistic hair-pulling and nose-tweaking; and Mojca Erdmann, clad in mini-skirt and high-heeled patent leather boots, is a delightful, thoroughly selfassured Blonde, impatient with Konstanze's soulsearching, and using her sexual power to reduce Kurt Rydl's formidable, orotund Osmin to a doeeyed baby. In keeping with the whole production, comic gags are largely eschewed. Constantinos Carydis conducts the excellent Netherlands CO with zest and a fair sense of period style. While many will prefer a more comically straightforward staging, Simons's production certainly makes you think afresh about Mozart's ostensibly innocent, happily-ever-after harem Singspiel.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Other productions have suggested a mutual attraction between the heroine and her oriental captor. Simons carries this to extremes. His staging is dominated by Konstanze's inner struggle between her loyalty to her betrothed and her disturbing feelings for the man who, we sense, has awakened her sexually. While there are irritating details in Simon's modern-dress production, I found it psychologically credible, often compelling. Laura Aikin vividly portrays Konstanze's fluctuating emotions in dialogue and aria. ...she makes "Marten aller Arten" a graphic embodiment of her conflicting feelings of desire and guilt, charging the stratospheric coloratura with a sense of neurotic desperation. Constantinos Carydis conducts the excellent Netherlands CO with zest and a fair sense of period style.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2009