Eno
Why we should say farewell to the ENO
It’s easy to forget what a mess of an art form opera once was. For its first 100 years it…
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…
Met Opera Live's Macbeth: Netrebko's singing stirred almost as much as her décolletage
This season of live Met relays got off to a most impressive start, with an electrifying account of Verdi’s tenth…
ENO’s The Girl of the Golden West is irresistibly seductive
Puccini’s La fanciulla del West is, one suspects, one of those works that modern audiences struggle to keep a straight…
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…
Is Anna Nicole’s absurd life worth our while? Not as much as Otello’s
So how did London’s two big opera companies launch their new seasons last week? Not perhaps in the way you…
Terry Gilliam turns to eye-watering excess for his staging of Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini
Operas about artists are not rare. However — perhaps for obvious reasons — those artists tend to be musicians, singers,…
A Rosenkavalier without a heart ain’t much of a Rosenkavalier
In all its minute details, Der Rosenkavalier is rooted in a painstakingly stylised version of Rococo Vienna that, paradoxically, is…
More woe for Oedipus
I had high hopes for Julian Anderson’s first opera, Thebans. Premièred at the Coliseum last Saturday, it promised to mark…
Mixed results from the ENO and ROH in their seasonal away games
It’s been a spring tradition for several years now for English National Opera to present small-scale productions in various venues…
ENO's Rodelinda: near-perfect singing, perfectly gimmicky direction
I wasn’t going to write about Handel’s Rodelinda, wasn’t even intending to go, but thanks to the kindness of the…
The state of opera today (it's not good)
I’ve been hoping that in this, the last of my weekly columns on opera, I would be able to strike…
The ENO's Magic Flute ignores everything that makes Mozart's opera great
A new production of The Magic Flute is something to look forward to, if with apprehension. How many aspects of…
A Fledermaus worth seeing for all its inadequacies
Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus (but if it’s given in English, why not The Bat? Does that somehow sound too unglamorous?)…
A sensational week for opera: sensationally good and sensationally bad
It’s been a sensational week for opera in London, with a sensationally good performance of Strauss’s Elektra at the Royal…
