John Wilson
A sugar rush for the eyes: Glyndebourne’s The Merry Widow reviewed
In 1905, shortly before the world première of The Merry Widow, the Viennese theatre manager Wilhelm Karczag got cold feet…
To die for: Grange Park Opera’s Tristan & Isolde reviewed
There are a lot of corpses on stage at the end of Charles Edwards’s production of Tristan & Isolde for…
A terrific night of opera: Zanetto/Orfeo ed Euridice, Arcola Theatre, reviewed
For a one-hit composer, we hear rather a lot of Pietro Mascagni. His reputation rests on his 1890 debut Cavalleria…
From bad joke to 21st-century classic: the best recordings of Korngold’s Violin Concerto
Erich Korngold was what you might call an early adopter. As a child prodigy in Habsburg Vienna, he’d astonished the…
Art tackles social distancing and, for once, actually wins: Philharmonia Sessions reviewed
First there were the home recitals: musicians playing solo Bach in front of their bookshelves, wonkily captured on iPhones. Next…
Hearing Gilbert & Sullivan on period instruments was a revelation
‘I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all,’ wrote Stravinsky in one…
A full-on Freudian Oklahoma! at Grange Park Opera
Oh, what a beautiful morning! In Jo Davies’s production of Oklahoma! the audience spends the overture staring at the side…
