English Touring Opera
The BBC Singers Centenary Concert was toe-curling
When does a new opera enter the repertoire? Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert has only had a couple of UK productions…
Baffling and vile: ETO’s Manon Lescaut reviewed
In 1937, John Barbirolli took six pieces by Henry Purcell and arranged them for an orchestra of strings, horns and…
Florid flummery: ETO’s Il viaggio a Reims reviewed
Lightning sometimes strikes twice. English Touring Opera hit topical gold last spring when, wholly by coincidence, they found themselves touring…
Bold, self-assured reimagining of Monteverdi: Opera North's Orpheus reviewed
You wouldn’t like Tamerlano when he’s angry. ‘My heart seethes with rage,’ he sings, in Act III of Handel’s opera…
Pitch-black satire drenched in an atmosphere of compelling unease: ETO's Golden Cockerel reviewed
Blame it on Serge Diaghilev. Rimsky-Korsakov died in 1908 and never saw the première of his last opera, The Golden…
Josquin changed musical history – why don't we hear more of him?
Stepping into the Sistine Chapel, the choir loft is probably the last thing you’d notice. ‘Loft’ is, frankly, a stretch…
After weeks of silence, Royal Opera reopened with a whimper
It was the fourth time, or maybe the fifth, that I found myself reaching for the tissues that I began…
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…
Deft humour and daft imagery: WNO’s Magic Flute reviewed
Operas are like buses. Both are filled with pensioners and take ages to get anywhere, but more importantly they always…
In praise of the English Touring Opera — a minor miracle of the arts world
Wolverhampton; Workington; Blackburn; Sheffield; Lancaster; Hackney. Every year English Touring Opera does what our national opera company doesn’t: packs up…
Soap opera
Previously on Giulio Cesare… English Touring Opera’s new season caters cannily to the box-set generation by chopping Handel’s Egyptian power-and-politics…
I doubt Goethe intended Werther's sorrows to be as unremitting as this
There are some things the French do better than everyone else. Cheese, military defeats and extra-marital affairs are a given,…
Why is Tippett's King Priam so difficult to love?
The difference between lovable, likable and admirable is perhaps more significant in the operatic world than in other artistic spheres…
Baroque opera shows vicious people can sometimes be happy — and we're glad they are
Visits by English Touring Opera are always to be looked forward to, but this autumn it has surpassed itself with…
