SINCE 1999 A LIVE REVIEW SITE FOR OPERA, BALLET, CONCERTS, BROADCASTS, AND THEATRE
Season Previews from around the world
THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA ANNOUNCES ITS 2021/22 ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL SEASON (11 PREMIERES, 34 CONCERTS AND A NEW PRINCIPAL CONDUCTOR, EDWARD GARDNER)
The London Philharmonic Orchestra today announced its 2021/22 season at the Royal Festival Hall, featuring 34 concerts of brilliantly curated programmes performed by many of the world’s leading musicians – and all in front of live audiences.
This autumn’s Glyndebourne Tour opens for public booking, including a striking new production of Beethoven’s only opera
Following its cancellation in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Glyndebourne Tour will return in autumn 2021 with performances at Glyndebourne and in Canterbury, Milton Keynes, Norwich and Liverpool.
An explosion of opera
Irish National Opera’s biggest-ever season
Wednesday 7 July 2021 to Saturday 25 June 2022
58 performances in 26 spaces at 20 different locations, 9 new productions,
6 operas by Irish composers, including 4 world premieres
Irish National Opera’s 2021-22 season is its biggest ever, and its most diverse
An unusual 2021-2022 season for San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera’s upcoming 2021-2022 season looks very different from anything they have ever done. It is not the repertory – which consists of familiar works by Mozart, Beethoven and Puccini and a reprise of one of its more successful contemporary commissions – but the format.
Live performances in the War Memorial Opera House for the first time since December 2019 feature five fully staged operas and two concerts. For the first time in the company’s history, operas will not be run in repertory. Instead, they are spread out to allow three weeks between opera runs, a concession to COVID-19 protocols.
Pittsburgh Opera announces 2021/2022 season
Pittsburgh Opera will be returning to larger venues in its upcoming season, beginning with Mozart’s The Magic Flute in November. During the height of the COVID pandemic, Pittsburgh Opera was able to combine live performances with limited, socially-distanced audiences and live-streams of each production. For the 2021/2022 season, the company will be returning to the Benedum Center and August Wilson African American Cultural Center, while also staging operas at its headquarters.
CITY OF BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PARTNERS WITH MARQUEE TV
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is delighted to announce it has agreed a two-year partnership with the leading arts streaming service, Marquee TV.
Launching on Saturday 5 June, six broadcasts of previously unseen and existing CBSO performances will be released throughout June and July on marquee.tv. Featuring repertoire ranging from Nielsen to Gilbert and Sullivan, the broadcasts will enable global audiences to experience the CBSO, building on the orchestra’s work throughout the pandemic to connect digitally with music-lovers worldwide.
The six-concert series will premiere five previously unseen performances including music by Clyne, Coleridge-Taylor, Dvořák, Glinka, Glazunov, Shaw, Mendelssohn, Nielsen, Saint-Saëns, Sibelius, Takemitsu and Tchaikovsky conducted by Ryan Bancroft, Jonathan Bloxham, Ben Gernon, John Wilson and Kazuki Yamada. Stephen Hough performs Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto with Alpesh Chauhan and in a special programme of British light music, John Wilson joins the orchestra to shine a spotlight on Coates, Delius, Elgar, Gilbert and Sullivan and Haydn Wood.
The Grange Festival’s 2021 season (24 June – 24 July)
Summer 2021 sees new productions of La Cenerentola and Manon Lescaut as well as a remake of Paul Curran’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The season also includes three staged concert performances of My Fair Lady and spoken theatre for the first time with a new production of Shakespeare’s King Lear
‘The entire event was a credit to Chance for opting for something entirely unpredictable…’
– The Sunday Times review of Precipice, August 2020
The Grange Festival’s 2021 season is set to start on Thursday 24 June 2021 with an exciting programme of opera, a concert staging of a musical and their first ever presentation of spoken theatre. Having had to postpone the 2020 programme, this summer’s festival will see the productions of Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Lerner & Loewe’s My Fair Lady that would have been performed last summer, as well as a new production of Shakespeare’s King Lear. The Festival’s residency partnership with Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra continues with the orchestra accompanying nearly all productions during the 2021 season.
Live performance is back with a bang – Simon Thompson on the 2021 Edinburgh International Festival
Anyone reading this south of Hadrian’s Wall might wonder why we Scots are so especially excited about the return of the Edinburgh International Festival. After all, hasn’t the national lockdown been over for several months now, and haven’t we had plenty of opportunities for live music since the pandemic?