Alerted by a friend who heard the première of Thomas Adès' new opera last week, we're off to catch it this Wednesday. (This performance will be broadcast live on Radio 3. ) The ROH production, conducted by Adès, has received warm reviews:
It promises to be a score that will repay repeated hearings, for the orchestral layers beneath the voices are equally rich. There are shifting gauzes of muted strings, and rivulets of woodwind underpinning nearly everything, just as there are moments in all three acts which are by any standards sheerly, heartstoppingly beautiful; passages in which the music seems to be mined from an unfathomable depth of feeling. The Guardian
A Telegraph article on Adès ('As Thomas Adès prepares to unveil his new opera, The Tempest, Ivan Hewett wonders whether the composer will succumb to the pressures and expectations that proved such a burden for similarly gifted British composers in the past') can be read here (may require free registration).
