Michael White, Author at Catholic Herald

Michael White

Dark shows for dark times: going toe to toe with Elektra and The Handmaid’s Tale

March 23, 2024

There’s an old Bugs Bunny cartoon with the punchline, “What’d ya expect in a opera – a happy ending?” It’s a fair point. Opera does of course do comedy, but tends to misery/pain/anguish as default positions. And they were defaulting to excess at the start of the year when London’s two main lyric companies –

Choirs at Christmas

February 02, 2024

From prestigious cathedral choirs to small ensembles, Michael White enjoyed concerts of the highest quality. I’m never sure what it is that compels us with peculiar force in deepest winter to gather together and sing – or at least gather together and hear other people sing – but imagine it’s something programmed into our collective

Israel-Palestine anxieties bear heavily on productions at Covent Garden and Bath

January 09, 2024

Filled as they are with stories about vengeful Israelites in conflict with their neighbours, it takes little effort these days to find sensitive material in Handel’s great Old Testament-based oratorios. Jephtha, which has vengeful Israelites from start to finish, is a case in point. And although preparations for the recent Covent Garden staging will have

Celestial assault in a mind-altering performance of Hildegard’s soaring music

December 01, 2023

Whatever we know about the 12th-century religious polymath Hildegard of Bingen is new knowledge, because she all but vanished from the record until the 1970s when her work was rediscovered, turning her into a cult figure. And there was plenty to discover. Essentially a Benedictine nun, she was also a mystic given to visions, theologian,

Rheingold: Opera as life and death at the Royal Opera House

November 03, 2023

Michael White enjoys an environmental Rheingold, a quest for happiness and an epic celebration of Stephen Sondheim. As someone put it to me last month, Wagner’s Ring is “fairy tales with music”. But it’s more: a history of the world from start to finish, told by somebody with an agenda and some questionable prejudices, but

God at the Proms: Three powerful performances in this year’s season

October 11, 2023

That this year’s Proms were big on God and death was maybe nothing special: God and death are ever-present in the concert repertoire. But looking back over the season, it was notable how many of the standout Proms events explored these topics. A case in point was Dialogues des Carmélites: the Poulenc opera brought to

From Cheltenham to Ryedale: the highs and lows of the festival season

September 02, 2023

The Essex town of Thaxted has assorted claims to fame, but for the most part they relate to its medieval parish church: a building of cathedral-like magnificence which in the 20th century attracted interesting priests and still more interesting musicians. Gustav Holst was Thaxted’s organist during the early years of World War I, founding a

Response to life

August 03, 2023

Michael White enjoys three very different outstanding performances. When music tourists go to Leipzig it tends to be for JS Bach, who lies buried (or seems to: there are disputes about whether it’s really him) by the chancel steps of the town’s Thomaskirche and presides in death over the rich, ongoing musical life of that

Enjoying tango and church music

July 04, 2023

Even a resolute republican would have been impressed by one essential aspect of King Charles’s coronation: its delirious abundance of great choral music. In a spectacle that could so easily have turned to pantomime – Gilbert & Sullivan came to mind – it was the music that provided anchorage, magnificently done and standing testament to

Henryk Górecki: A sonic exorcism

June 14, 2023

Michael White finds the perfect setting for Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Some years ago I went to Warsaw to meet Henryk Górecki, who had been one of the many creditable modernist composers functioning in Poland in the later 20th century and would have remained so but for the fact that he abandoned modernism, discovered

Finding intensity and delight in new and abounding talent

May 09, 2023

In his lifetime (1637-1707) Dietrich Buxtehude rose to fame in mainland Europe as organist and choirmaster at the Mariankirche, Lubeck. Young musicians travelled there to learn from him – including Bach (who did the 250 mile journey on foot) and Handel, who might have been his successor at Lubeck but for the problem that the

Fauré’s Requiem – Facing death through music

April 14, 2023

Michael White praises a production of Fauré’s Requiem accompanied by sky burial, and a powerful opera about a nun visiting Death Row. Gabriel Fauré may have been a composer of uncertain faith but he produced possibly the best-loved, most often performed Requiem of all time. And its attract-ions are clear enough, presenting an image of

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