Otello, Opera North January 2013
“This is Opera North back on top form, with the conductor undoubtedly the star of the show: how long before Richard Farnes is recognised as a national treasure?”Rupert Christiansen, The Daily Telegraph, January 2013
Otello, Opera North January 2013
“What gives the show a touch of international class is Richard Farnes’ conducting – a classic Verdian combination of tender lyricism and dramatic largesse.”Andrew Clark, The Financial Times, January 2013
Otello, Opera North January 2013
“Orchestrally, it is fabulous: Richard Farnes's conducting, at once detailed and visceral, is outstanding.”Tim Ashley, The Guardian, January 2013
The Makropulous Case, Opera North August 2012
“From, the fierce, throbbing start to the sparing final pages, and with a vitality that never drowns his singers, the conductor Richard Farnes gives us one of the great musical accounts of Janacek’s penultimate opera.”John Allison, The Sunday Telegraph, August 2012
The Makropulous Case, Opera North August 2012
“…the evening’s star is Richard Farnes, who conducts his orchestra with a finely judged sense of the work’s febrile modernist edge and urban restlessness: under his electrifying baton, the music reaches a white heat of intensity without blasting the singers or losing the plot.”Rupert Christiansen, The Daily Telegraph, August 2012
Die Walküre, Opera North June 2012
“Less can be more when it comes to Wagner, and Opera North's “austerity Ring” – now on its second instalment in its second year – continues to enthral and amaze. First and foremost this is because its musical standards remain consistently high… Richard Farnes's conducting, meanwhile, is sensational in its sweep, detail and understanding.”Tim Ashley, The Guardian, June 2012
Die Walküre, Opera North June 2012
“Nor does the conductor Richard Farnes have much to fear from big-name comparisons. With his orchestra playing incandescently (some momentary brass wobbles aside), he proved himself a born Wagnerian, with a natural sense of the score’s pulse and flow as well as its architecture. No crashing about, no over-inflated rhetoric: Farnes held a clear, taut musical line and never let the fortissimi go to his head.”Rupert Christiansen, The Daily Telegraph, June 2012
Das Rheingold, Opera North June 2011
“The chief medium of this alchemy was the conductor Richard Farnes, relatively new to this repertory, but already a master of its narrative ebb and flow…”Rupert Christiansen, The Daily Telegraph, June 2011
Das Rheingold, Opera North June 2011
“Farnes has done many fine things at Opera North, but his pacing of this 150-minute sweep of music, his care about balance (not a single vocal line is overwhelmed) and the sumptuousness of the orchestral textures – all this constitutes a massive achievement.”Richard Morrison, The Times, June 2011
