NBR New Zealand Opera's most recent production of the perennial favourite, Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" looked and sounded splendid on the opening night in Wellington. Despite one or two modernist quirks of production, this was definitely a "period" setting, with costumes, surroundings and ambiences that mostly sat well with the music and the drama. Onstage, behind an initially overbearing, almost fortress-like latticed wall which opened and closed at... read more

(A "guest review" by Peter Coates of this concert appears at the end of this article)

Enthusiasts for fine orchestral playing would have been thoroughly diverted by the chance to compare the NZSO’s playing of the Mozart “Jupiter” Symphony in this concert with that of those recent visitors to this country for the International Arts Festival, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. Unfortunately I didn’t get to the concert at which... read more