Opera
ENO's Indian Queen reviewed: Peter Sellars's bold new production needs editing
When is an opera not an opera? How much can you strip and peel away, or extend and graft on…
Opera North's Gianni Schicchi and La vida breve reviewed: a flawless double helping of verismo
Is there a more beautiful aria than ‘O mio babbino caro’ from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi? There are more overwhelming moments…
La Donna del Lago, Metropolitan Opera, review: Colm Toibin on a night of masterful singing
La Donna del Lago, based on a poem by Sir Walter Scott, is one of the nine serious, dramatic operas…
Mastersingers of Nuremberg, ENO, review: ‘a triumph’
ENO’s new production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg is a triumph about which only the most niggling of reservations…
Why we should say farewell to the ENO
It’s easy to forget what a mess of an art form opera once was. For its first 100 years it…
An artistic crime is committed at the Royal Festival Hall
In one of the more peculiar concerts that I have been to at the Royal Festival Hall, Vladimir Jurowski conducted…
Andrea Chénier, Royal Opera House, review: like a Carry On - but without the jokes
Who on earth could have predicted that a hoary old operatic melodrama set in revolutionary France would find resonance in…
Royal Opera’s Orfeo, Roundhouse: shouts its agenda so loudly the music struggles to be heard
What a week to stage an opera about art’s power to challenge institutional authority, oppression — even death itself. Orfeo’s…
Royal Opera's Un ballo in maschera: limp, careless and scrappy
Whether by chance or bold design, the Royal Opera’s two Christmas shows were written at precisely the same moment, between…
Royal Opera’s Tristan und Isolde: an absurd production - but still a magnificent night
Any adequate performance of Tristan und Isolde, and the first night of the Royal Opera’s production was at least that,…
Agents will be queuing up to sign this 26-year-old baritone from Sichuan
The Royal Academy of Music’s end-of-term opera can always be looked forward to because it never disappoints: the repertoire is…
Forget the Germans. It’s the French who made classical music what it is
The poor French. When we think of classical music, we always think of the Germans. It’s understandable. Instinctive. Ingrained. But…
ENO’s Gospel According to the Other Mary: great music weighed down by a worthy staging
Terrorism; East-West diplomacy; nuclear war: John Adams’s operas have poured music into the faultlines of 21st-century global politics, and the…
Royal Opera’s Idomeneo: get seats but make sure they’re facing away from the stage
Mozart’s first great opera, Idomeneo, is not often performed, and perhaps it’s better that way. It should be seen as…
Mariinsky’s Boris Godunov - a revelation
Anyone who thinks opera singers and orchestral players are overworked should spare a thought for the Mariinsky Opera on its…
Met Opera Live's Macbeth: Netrebko's singing stirred almost as much as her décolletage
This season of live Met relays got off to a most impressive start, with an electrifying account of Verdi’s tenth…
Glyndebourne’s Turn of the Screw: horrors of the most innocent and creepy kind
We all know that ‘They fuck you up your mum and dad’, but nowhere is this more reliably (and violently)…
Opera North’s Coronation of Poppea: a premium-rate sex-line of an opera
Virtue, hide thyself! The Coronation of Poppea opens with a warning and closes with a love duet for a concubine…
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…
Royal Opera's Rigoletto: your disbelief may wobble but your excitement won't
One of the greatest tests of how an opera house is functioning is the quality of its revivals. Both the…
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…
Is Anna Nicole’s absurd life worth our while? Not as much as Otello’s
So how did London’s two big opera companies launch their new seasons last week? Not perhaps in the way you…
Michael Tanner: Why I prefer Donizetti to Strauss
Three operas this week, each of them named after its (anti-)heroine: one of the heroines (the most sympathetic) murders her…
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
