Asistimos a la caída de Troya, a los amores sublimes de Dido y Eneas, a la muerte trágica de aquella y al odio implacable de Cartago contra Roma.Asistimos a la gran ceremonia mística y grandiosa que es 'Les troyens' cuando está bien hecha.

La afinación, empaste y precisión del Monteverdi Choir y la calidad de los English Baroque Soloists alcanzaron cotas sublimes.Como memorable la dirección de Sir John Eliot Gardiner al frente de los mismos, volviendo a demostrar que el rigor histórico de las formas y la emoción del contenido pueden (¡y deben!) integrarse.

Although Luca Francesconi’s Quartett production had undoubtedly been scheduled long before the first wave of the COVID pandemic, the opera, a claustrophobic and occasionally harrowing adaptation of Heiner Müller’s stage play of the same name, had an edge of lockdown madness that made it especially timely.

Ms Hannigan was called upon to push the words out of the dreamy haze of the music into a position of greater clarity, the notes that emerged were forceful and pure;but it was her ability to let the words rise and fall above the sonic water-line of the orchestra that created the impression of a fated narrator flickering in and out of existence.

Mr Furrer’s frequently magnificent score was equally steeped in the textural and harmonic language of the same era.Yet if the opera was indebted to the foundational themes and approaches of the previous century, it seemed less a throwback than a careful distillation.

The Vortex Jazz Club.Dick-Wag: a Tribute to Richard Wagner.Jazz adaptations of Wagner music by Fred Thomas.Ewan Bleach (clarinettist and saxophonist), Kit Downes (piano) and Fred Thomas (bass).