The week in classical: Proms 1 & 7; L’arlesiana; Il segreto di Susanna/Iolanta; Die Zauberflöte – review

Royal Albert Hall; Opera Holland Park, London; Glyndebourne, East Sussex
The 125th BBC Proms get off to a flying start, Opera Holland Park is on a roll, and the Queen of the Night gets a new day job

We have lift-off. Another season of the Proms, the largest and least elitist music festival in the world (more than 1,000 £6 tickets available every day) is well under way, having scorched off the launchpad with a moon-walk anniversary theme in a heady week when the operatic stage gave us triumph, tragedy – and real disappointment.

Apart from a storming performance of Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, the most significant moment in Prom 1 wasn’t a musical one. Instead, it was the warm embrace of congratulation between two super-talented women, New Yorker Karina Canellakis, the first woman to conduct the First Night in the Proms’ 125-year history, and Canadian composer Zosha Di Castri, whose Long Is the Journey – Short Is the Memory opened the festival. Slowly, men are losing their grip on these key events. One small step for womankind... In just 15 minutes, Di Castri’s music took us into space and back with an ethereal, appropriately weightless work that allowed the BBC Singers to excel and challenged the players of the BBC Symphony Orchestra to produce all manner of sci-fi effects.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2GKkLfx