Bryn Terfel
Vivid, noble and bouyant: AAM’s Messiah reviewed
More than a thousand musicians took part when Handel’s Messiah was performed in Westminster Abbey in May 1791. It wasn’t…
Too affectionate, not enough cruelty: Don Pasquale, at the Royal Opera House, reviewed
There are many things to enjoy in the Royal Opera’s revival of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, but perhaps the most surprising…
Comes so close to greatness but succumbs to prejudice: Royal Opera's Peter Grimes reviewed
No question, the Royal Opera is on a roll. Just look at the cast list alone for Deborah Warner’s new…
Classy and classic
The Edinburgh International Festival began with a double helping of incest. Curiously, Greek — Mark-Anthony Turnage’s East End retelling of…
An unqualified triumph: Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera reviewed
The Royal Opera has bitten the bullet so far as Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov goes, and opted to stage the original…
Blunt and bloody: ENO's Sweeney Todd reviewed
A wicked deception is sprung in the opening moments of this New York-originated concert staging of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh…
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…
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…
