Mark Padmore

O homem do chapéu (Ciarán Hinds) viaja pelo interior francês em um Fiat 500 acompanhado por um porta-retratos com a foto de uma mulher desconhecida. Ele é perseguido por cinco homens furiosos em um Citroën Dyane. Por que eles estão o seguindo? E como ele pode despistá-los? Indo para o norte em sua fuga através de montanhas, desfiladeiros e pontes da França, ele escuta histórias de amor e perda e encontra misteriosos estranhos, como a ciclista (Sasha Hails), o homem molhado (Stephen Dillane), a chef de cozinha (Muna Otaru) e a motociclista (Maïwenn). Dando de cara com excentricidades vívidas de um antigo país em um velho continente, ele tenta fugir dos seus perseguidores que, incansavelmente, estão sempre na sua cola.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle was one of the outstanding events of the past season. As before with the St Matthew Passion, star director Peter Sellars succeeded in creating a staging which made the spiritual and dramatic content of the Passion story even more intensive. The New York Times also praised the “brilliant and energetic” playing of the orchestra, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung the “haunting, almost unsurpassable singing of all those involved.”

A beautiful, sensitive, reverent performance. Fischer allows Bach to speak with no unnecessary flourishes. Padmore as the Evangelist is superb, and the other soloists and choirs are near perfect. And of course the Concertgebouw orchestral musicians are absolutely first class.

Sir Simon Rattle was in no doubt: the performance of the St Matthew Passion which he realised together with the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Rundfunkchor Berlin in 2010 was for him “the single most important thing we ever did here”. Critics around the world agreed. They praised the semi-staged “ritualization” by American star-director Peter Sellars, as well as the outstanding musical performances by the soloists, including Magdalena Kožená, Christian Gerhaher, Thomas Quasthoff and Mark Padmore as the Evangelist.

The operatic version of the famous story about a governess who fears her two charges are possessed.

This epic opera follows Virgil, beginning as the Greeks appear to have ceded the field after ten years of the Trojan War. Cassandra tries to warn of the terrible fate to come, but fate is set and Troy falls. The first two acts cover this tragic end, then the flight of survivors to Carthage and events at Carthage continue in acts 3 - 5, culminating in the further voyage for Italy and Rome. This is Virgil's classic epic, in operatic form, in about a three and a half hour performance from French Opera.

Live performance at Théâtre de l’Archevêché du Festival d’art lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence 2002. Daniel Harding conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Choeur de l'Académie Européenne de Musique. Directed for stage by Peter Brook.

Video of a performance from the Bach cantata pilgrimage undertaken by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the Monteverdi Choir, and the English Baroque soloists in 2000 to mark the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, in which Gardiner conducts cantatas BWV 179, 199 & 113.