At the Venice Fair (La Fiera di Venezia), Antonio Salieri (1750-1825). Bampton Classical Opera
Anyone who is interested in the development of the theatre in the eighteenth century should not miss next year’s performance.
Criticks – BSECS online reviews
The eighteenth century was the first great age of criticism. In this spirit, the Criticks website provides entertaining, informative and provocative reviews of events and media that are of interest to scholars of the eighteenth century. These complement the reviews of books that are published in the journal of the Society, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
Plays, concerts, operas, exhibitions, films, broadcasts and online resources are here considered in depth by experts in the field. If there is an event that you would like to see reviewed in these pages, or if you would like to review for us, please contact one of the editors below:
Criticks Editor
Criticks Subject Editors
Fine and Decorative Art: Miriam Al Jamil
Media: Gráinne O’Hare
Music: Brianna Robertson-Kirkland
Theatre: Katie Noble
Handel Festival, Halle 2023
The Halle Festival offers plentiful musical delights each year, but it is only fitting that we cherish some more than some others.
Amanda Babington (musette) Claire Babington (cello) David Smith (harpsichord). Music for French Kings, Deux-Elles, 2022.
A welcome addition to the emerging discography of the musette, a small, refined bellows-blown bagpipe that flourished at the French court in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The Marriage of Figaro
Glyndebourne tour their funky Figaro, set in the 1970s.
The Rake’s Progress
Very enjoyable and persuasive. If you are a fan of Hogarth’s prints and you haven’t yet seen Hockney’s famous staging, then I would urge you to seek it out.
New Chamber Opera, La diavolessa (‘The She-Devil’), Directed by Michael Burden; The Band of Instruments conducted by Steven Devine
A moment of contingent yet celebratory social reconciliation and healing, felt just right as way to tentatively, for the moment provisionally, but unmistakably joyfully begin to return to life as it
Bampton Classical Opera perform Gluck’s ‘THE CROWN’ (‘La corona’)
A charming opera, expertly performed.
Lang Lang (2020) Bach: Goldberg Variations, Deutsche Grammophone.
A true testament to the increasingly expressive work carried out by today’s serious musicians.
Instruments of Time and Truth: Musical Culture and Empire in 18th Century London.
A feast of riches, available online forever.
Riccardo Minasi and the Ensemble Resonanz, (2020), Mozart Symphonies: Nos. 39, 40 & 41 “Jupiter”, (Hamburg, Germany: Harmonia Mundi, HMM90262930).
A prescient reinterpretation, less interested in historical accuracy than in bringing the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries together.