Opera
You'll shrug where you should marvel: Garsington's Amadigi reviewed
When you think of Handel’s Amadigi (in so far as anyone thinks about the composer’s rarely staged, also-ran London score…
Lush, elegant and vivid: Der Rosenkavalier at Garsington reviewed
At the turning point of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Der Rosenkavalier, all the clocks stop. Octavian has arrived…
World-class music, heavily symbolic staging: Glyndebourne's Katya Kabanova reviewed
At the first night of Glyndebourne Festival 2021 there was relief and joyful expectation as Gus Christie made his speech…
The two composers who defined British cinema also wrote inspired operas
It’s my new lockdown ritual. Switch on the telly, cue up the menu and scroll down to where the vintage…
Another cracking take on the opera film: Marquee TV’s Turn of the Screw reviewed
I’m still waiting for the Royal Opera to step up. Nearly a year into the Covid crisis and what do…
A coherent evening of real opera: GSMD's Triple Bill reviewed
Covid has been many things to the arts — most of them unprintable. A plague, a scourge, a disaster from…
A new opera that deserves more than one outing: Royal Opera's New Dark Age reviewed
It’s quite a title sequence. Puccini swells on the soundtrack and words flash before your eyes. ‘Ecstatic!’ ‘Spellbound!’ ‘Passionate!’ ‘Dazzled!’…
I pounded my car horn like a Neapolitan cabbie: ENO's drive-in Bohème reviewed
The email from English National Opera was blunt: ‘Your arrival time is 18.25. If you arrive outside your allocated time…
Why imperfect operas like Don Carlo are more interesting than perfect ones
In the 62 years since I first heard and saw Don Carlo, in the famous and long-lasting production by Visconti…
The best recordings of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges
‘I don’t want to do my work. I want to go for a walk. I want to eat all the…
It costs a lot of money to look this cheap: Metropolitan Opera’s At-Home Gala reviewed
Desperate times call for desperate measures. With the world’s opera houses currently dark, the New York Metropolitan Opera tackled the…
The musical vaccination we all need against the bleak times ahead: ETO’s Cosi fan tutte reviewed
Anyone familiar with Joe Hill-Gibbins’s work will brace instinctively when the curtain goes up on his new Figaro. He’s the…
A lost opera from the most powerful musician you’ve never heard of: La ville morte reviewed
Who was the most influential figure in 20th-century classical music? Stravinsky? Pierre Boulez? What about Bernstein or Britten? John Cage…
Eurotrash Verdi: ENO’s Luisa Miller reviewed
Verdi’s Luisa Miller is set in the Tyrol in the early 17th century, and for some opera directors that’s a…
More misogynistic than the original: ENO’s Orpheus in the Underworld reviewed
It’s Act Three of Emma Rice’s new production of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, and Eurydice (Mary Bevan) is trapped…
More Grace Kelly than Grace Jones: Welsh National Opera’s Carmen reviewed
How do you take your Carmen? Sun-drenched exotic fantasy with a side order of castanets, or cool and gritty, sour…
Why are so many operas by women adaptations of films by men?
Opera’s line of corpses — bloodied, battered, dumped in a bag — is a long one. Now it can add…
It’s not fair – I liked Il segreto di Susanna before it was cool: OHP’s double bill reviewed
Should a secret pleasure ever be shared? Spoiler alert: Susanna’s secret, unknown to her husband Gil, is that she smokes.…
Deft, elegant and genuinely chilling: Garsington’s Turn of the Screw reviewed
Think of the children in opera. Not knowing sopranos and mezzos, pigtailed and pinafored or tightly trousered-up to look child-like,…
Saved by the chorus
We’ve cried wolf with Handel. Ever since the modern trend began for staging the composer’s oratorios we’ve hailed each one…