Juan Diego Flórez
Fails to ignite: Royal Opera’s Tales of Hoffmann reviewed
I couldn’t love anyone who didn’t love Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Everything – everything – is stacked against this…
As good a treatment of a Bellini opera as we are likely to see: WNO's I puritani reviewed
Bellini belongs to that category of not-quite-great operatic composers whose works are also very difficult to perform adequately, and don’t…
La Donna del Lago, Metropolitan Opera, review: Colm Toibin on a night of masterful singing
La Donna del Lago, based on a poem by Sir Walter Scott, is one of the nine serious, dramatic operas…
Dialogues des Carmélites brings out the best in Poulenc – and the Royal Opera House
Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites is an audacious work, much more so than many others that advertise their audacity. It deals…
Opera's fallen women
Opera’s grim fascination with ‘fallen women’ — as Welsh National Opera has called its latest mini-season — lies largely in…
