David McVicar
An ensemble achievement that dances and sparkles: Glyndebourne’s Giulio Cesare reviewed
A classic opera production ages like wine. When David McVicar’s staging of Handel’s Giulio Cesare first opened at Glyndebourne in…
Bristol’s new concert hall is extremely fine
Bristol has a new concert hall, and it’s rather good. The transformation of the old Colston Hall into the Bristol…
More depravity, please: Salome, at the Royal Opera House, reviewed
The first night of the new season at Covent Garden was cancelled when the solemn news came through. The second…
A booster shot of sunlight: Unsuk Chin's new violin concerto reviewed
Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra began the year with a world première. Unsuk Chin’s Second Violin Concerto…
The finest Falstaff you’ll see this summer
Comedy’s a funny thing. No, seriously, the business of making people laugh is as fragile, as mercurial as cryptocurrency —…
Handsome and revivable but I wasn’t moved: Royal Opera’s Death in Venice reviewed
Premièred within two years of each other, Luchino Visconti’s film and Benjamin Britten’s opera Death in Venice both take Thomas…
The National Youth Orchestra showed that they’re the equal of any professional band
Everyone knows — don’t they? — that the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain is the UK’s youngest world-class symphony…
A devastating Jenufa - if you could hear it
About 15 minutes into act one of Jenufa, the student in the next seat leaned over to her companions and…
McVicar’s Figaro looks increasingly fossilised. Time for the Royal Opera to ditch it
Is there a more extraordinary, more heart-stilling moment in all opera than the finale of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro?…
Was Glyndebourne right to revive Donizetti’s Poliuto? No, says Michael Tanner
It’s been a busy operatic week, with a nearly great concert performance of Parsifal in Birmingham on Sunday (reviewed by…
OperaUpClose’s production of Elixir of Love is by far the best update of an opera Michael Tanner has ever seen
Three staples of the Italian repertoire, performed and seen in very different circumstances, have confirmed my view that they deserve…
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 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…
