I was going to finish my rave about Harrison Birtwistle‘s new opera The Minotaur, which I took my girlfriend to see at the Royal Opera House last weekend. (Warning: we’ve been together for a few years – this is not a good date opera!) However, I got distracted by finally working out how to make the header on the archive pages clickable to get you back to the front page of the blog. It’s a good day.
The last opera I saw was Satyagraha, over a year ago; and this weekend I’ll be at Southbank for Luigi Nono’s Prometeo. For all the musical and dramatic power of Birtwistle’s opera, thinking of it in retrospect makes it seem almost quaintly conventional compared to these two other works; but that’s hardly a fair assessment.
I’m still trying to figure out what to play for my gig at Horse Bazaar (Wednesday 11 June!), so The Minotaur review may come out before or after I’ve seen Prometeo. If the latter, I’ll try to resist making comparisons.
