Opera
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
In defence of Puccini
During my opera-going lifetime the most sensational change in the repertoire has, of course, been the immense expansion of the…
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…
In Norwich, a director is caught trying to murder Wagner’s Tannhäuser
Seventeen years ago the Norwegian National Opera staged two cycles of the Ring in Norwich’s Theatre Royal, performances that have…
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…
Opera North's Götterdämerung is astounding (nearly)
It seems a very short time since I interviewed Richard Farnes about Opera North’s planned Ring cycle, the dramas to…
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,…
