John Adams
Their Majesties the Presidents
For anyone who’s a little bit worried about the current state of the Union, Andrew Gimson’s book is a godsend.…
Bracing and provocative – but would Wagner have approved? Arcola’s Rheingold reviewed
When it comes to the opening of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, Mark Twain probably put it as well as anyone: ‘Out…
Whatever happened to Alice?
In 1987, the art of opera changed decisively. John Adams’s opera Nixon in China was so unlike the usual run…
The birth of a royal baby is hardly an exciting event
There are already people camping outside St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, to await the birth shortly of another royal baby, the…
What Cicero knew that David Davis doesn't
The MP David Davis has lamented that the British seem to prefer laws that protect their security rather than guard…
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…
No one in the Bible has been as elaborately misrepresented as Mary Magdalene
A bogus history book and a new oratorio turn Mary Magdalene into the wife of Jesus and a human rights activist. Damian Thompson feels sorry for the poor woman
