Ben Johnson

Will the Olympics ever be politics-free?

20 July 2024 9:00 am

Despite Baron Coubertin’s ideals, nationalistic friction at the Paris Games in 1924 had already prompted a Times headline: ‘Olympics doomed’

War and plague have menaced theatres before, but rarely on this scale

28 March 2020 9:00 am

War and plague have menaced theatres before, but rarely on this scale, says Lloyd Evans

Deft humour and daft imagery: WNO’s Magic Flute reviewed

16 March 2019 9:00 am

Operas are like buses. Both are filled with pensioners and take ages to get anywhere, but more importantly they always…

Partying like it’s 1899: two lieder recitals reviewed

4 November 2017 9:00 am

If a symphony is, as Mahler famously put it, ‘like the world’, then songs and lieder are like seeing that…

Delibes’ Lakmé at Holland Park is visually soporific, but the singing keeps Geoff Brown awake

18 July 2015 9:00 am

These are nervous times at the opera. When should we expect the gratuitous rape scene? Will the director relocate the…