ENO’s The Girl of the Golden West is irresistibly seductive
Puccini’s La fanciulla del West is, one suspects, one of those works that modern audiences struggle to keep a straight…
Robo-Tell hits Welsh National Opera
Is there a fundamental, insuperable problem with staging Rossini’s Guillaume Tell on a budget, without the resources to conjure up…
Mariinsky’s Les Troyens — a bad night for Berlioz and Edinburgh
I wonder whether grand opéra really takes war as seriously as this year’s Edinburgh Festival wanted it to. These vast…
The small rewards of small-scale opera
Neither OperaUpClose’s La traviata nor Finborough Theatre’s production of Boughton’s The Immortal Hour quite cut it
Strauss and Hofmannsthal deserve better from the Salzburg Festival
The Salzburg Festival’s reputation might largely be one of cultural conservatism, but it made an impressive commitment to new works…
Jonas Kaufmann's illness, a muddled production – nothing can stop Bavarian State Opera's La forza del destino
Rather than brave the boos and the first reprise of Frank Castorf’s half-hearted Ring at Bayreuth, I decided to pay…
I can’t see the point of Glyndebourne’s La traviata
One of the highlights of last year’s Glyndebourne Festival was the revival of Richard Jones’s Falstaff, spruced up and invigorated…
Buxton Festival sticks its neck out with two rarities by Dvorak and Gluck
Dvorak’s The Jacobin and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, the two operas that opened this year’s Buxton Festival, are both relative…
Royal Opera's Maria Stuarda: pathos and nobility from Joyce DiDonato, lazy nonsense from the directors
London is lucky to have heard Joyce DiDonato at the height of her powers in two consecutive seasons. The American…
Manon Lescaut: Puccini’s Anna Nicole?
This season has already seen Manon Lescaut appear in several different operatic guises across the UK, but it was Covent…
Tilting at metronomes: Massenet's Don Quichotte opens at Grange Park Opera
To suggest that the ageing Jules Massenet identified himself with the title character of his Don Quichotte is nothing new…
Terry Gilliam turns to eye-watering excess for his staging of Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini
Operas about artists are not rare. However — perhaps for obvious reasons — those artists tend to be musicians, singers,…
WNO's production of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron is an overwhelming experience – but make sure you close your eyes
On paper, Moses und Aron might seem intractable and abstract: a 12-tone score setting a libretto that meditates on God,…
A Rosenkavalier without a heart ain’t much of a Rosenkavalier
In all its minute details, Der Rosenkavalier is rooted in a painstakingly stylised version of Rococo Vienna that, paradoxically, is…
Two Mimi-Rodolfos at Opera North who go from nought to frisky very believably
Purists might have winced at Opera North’s advertisement for its latest revival of La Bohème. ‘If you see one musical…
More woe for Oedipus
I had high hopes for Julian Anderson’s first opera, Thebans. Premièred at the Coliseum last Saturday, it promised to mark…
Britten’s worldwide reputation is enhanced in Lyon
One of the proudest boasts to come from Britten HQ in Aldeburgh during the composer’s anniversary last year was that…
Bryn Terfel lords it over 'Faust' magnificently
There’s a great deal to disapprove of in Gounod’s Faust. It breaks down a pillar of western literature and whisks…
Mixed results from the ENO and ROH in their seasonal away games
It’s been a spring tradition for several years now for English National Opera to present small-scale productions in various venues…
Handelian pleasures vs modern head-scratchers
Opera seems almost always to have been acutely concerned with its own future. These days this is most often manifested…
The Royal Opera House's Die Frau ohne Schatten – a dream solution to Strauss’s problem opera?
If ever an opera was weighed down by its creators’ joint ambition, it is Die Frau ohne Schatten. Richard Strauss…
Opera's fallen women
Opera’s grim fascination with ‘fallen women’ — as Welsh National Opera has called its latest mini-season — lies largely in…
Why is Tippett's King Priam so difficult to love?
The difference between lovable, likable and admirable is perhaps more significant in the operatic world than in other artistic spheres…
Leipzig and Dresden are both staging Elektra. Which city wins?
Yet more performances of Elektra, Richard Strauss’s setting of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s ramped-up, neurosis-riddled 1903 reworking of Sophocles, are unlikely…
