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Opera

Cliché, cynicism and a car-crash finale: Royal Opera's Jephtha reviewed

18 November 2023

9:00 AM

18 November 2023

9:00 AM

Jephtha

Royal Opera House, in rep until 24 November

7 Deaths of Maria Callas

London Coliseum

London’s two opera houses have been busy staging non-operas. Handel’s English oratorio, Jephtha, is his final exercise in a form that only existed because it was, explicitly, not opera (Georgian theatres needed something to play during Lent). We know better today, and dramatised reboots of Handel oratorios are proliferating, possibly because – unlike his actual operas – they give the chorus something to do.

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