Bajazet

by Antonio Vivaldi
Royal Opera House/ Irish National Opera

Cast: James Laing / Niamh O’Sullivan / Claire Booth / Gianluca Margheri / Aoife Miskelly / Eric Jurenas

Conductor: Peter Whelan / Designer: Molly O’Cathain / Lighting Designer: Sinéad Wallace / Associate Director: Emma Woods / Fight Director: Kev McCurdy / Photographer: Kip Carroll

Nominated for the 2022 Olivier Award for Best New Opera Production

★★★★★ Opera Now
★★★★ Guardian
★★★★ The i

★★★★ The Stage
★★★★ Telegraph
★★★★ The Arts Review

★★★★★ Culture Whisper
★★★★ Observer
★★★★ Times

★★★★★ Irish Examiner
★★★★ Financial Times
★★★★ Bachtrack

In terms of performances of opera from all periods, this was on the finest on a purely dramatic level I have attended, anywhere

★★★★★ Opera Now

It’s about outsize characters, extreme emotions and - in Adele Thomas’s gleefully physical direction - the pleasure of watching everyone on stage knocking seven bells out of each other in flashing coloratura. This was headlong, red-blooded fun
Spectator

Adele Thomas’s staging of Bajazet should finally silence those detractors of Vivaldi as an opera composer who are prone to complain that he was no dramatist. This was a no-holds-barred company debut, in a highly physical production bristling with action
Opera

Its real power is in its searing production by director Adele Thomas. It was an exhilarating evening, the more so for being such an unanticipated pleasure. With more events like this, Baroque opera could quickly come in from the cold margins and reclaim its place in the limelight
Musical America

This earthy, sexy production grabs Vivaldi by the funny bone and delivers a deliciously over the top show full of bad boys, bad girls and wonderful singing
The Irish Independent

Bajazet shows how much can be done when opera is stripped back to bodies and voices making the most concentrated and calculated of gestures. A bracing evening, and reminder of how much more less really can be

Operawire

In an electrifying production by Adele Thomas, the talented cast give such a musically and dramatically thrilling performance that it’s hard to remember the last time I enjoyed myself so much at the theatre

★★★★ Bachtrack