Chambers of Inspiration is published in “Collected”, a weekly newsletter of articles on writing and literature by Royal Literary Fund writers. For full article visit the RFL website. Chambers Of Inspiration – The rooms that haunt historical novelists It is one of the mysterious processes of writing fiction that a particular image will lodge at the back… Continue reading…
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Opera review: Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor
This review by Clare Colvin was first published in the Sunday Express on Sunday 10 April 2016. THE Royal Opera’s cautionary warning of “scenes of sex and violence” in Katie Mitchell’s staging of Lucia di Lammermoor may have taken into account the notoriety attracted by Mitchell’s production of Sarah Kane’s Cleansed at the National Theatre,… Continue reading…
Donna Anna’s Game
Mozart’s Don Giovanni*** Royal Opera House Video wizardry has a starring role in Kasper Holten’s new staging of Don Giovanni. Women’s names spread like a plague of graffiti over set designer Es Devlin’s solid chunk of masonry during the overture. The names are reminders of Don Giovanni’s conquests noted in a little black book by… Continue reading…
Best of Britten
From Sunday Express – February 2 2014 Britten’s Peter Grimes***** (English National Opera – Tickets: 020 7845 9300; £12-£99) In its first revival at the Coliseum after an extensive tour, David Alden’s 2009 staging of Peter Grimes packs a devastating impact. Having previously awarded it five stars, I really should give it five star plus… Continue reading…
Popcorn with Don Giovanni
Preview of opera – spring/summer 2014 Now that the Royal Opera House in London and the Metropolitan Opera in New York regularly bring opera live to cinema worldwide, no one has any excuse to berate the art form as elitist. The much heralded new staging by Kasper Holten of Mozart’s Don Giovanni may be… Continue reading…
How was 2012 for you?
Well, writing a regular blog was one 2012 resolution that fell short of intentions. It was, in all, a busy year, plenty to report on the opera front in my weekly column in the Sunday Express (www.express.co.uk). Just picking out a few highlights – Birmingham Contemporary Music Group’s performance at the Barbican of Gerald Barry’s… Continue reading…
Making a splash
What are opera singers prepared to go through for their art? I ask after seeing the excellent baritone Andrew Shore submerge himself up to the neck for the third time in the reed-lined pool constructed in the Hampstead Theatre, in the cause of playing the “Sturm und Drang” German poet Jakob Lenz, in the… Continue reading…
Law and music
Juan Diego Florez and Ian Rosenblatt go back a long way – to JDF’s first recital in England in 2001. Rosenblatt, whose day job is running the flourishing legal practice Rosenblatt Solicitors, spotted the young Peruvian tenor at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro, and immediately invited him to take part in the newly launched Rosenblatt… Continue reading…
The fat lady vanishes
Welcome to my new blog! I’ll be writing about topics that interest me and, I hope, my readers. Two passions will be to the fore – books and opera, or even books about opera. My second novel,Masque of the Gonzagas, was set in the highly operatic court of Mantua at the time of Claudio Monteverdi, the… Continue reading…
