La traviata
This is how G&S should be staged: ENO's HMS Pinafore reviewed
Until 1881, HMS Pinafore was the second-longest-running show in West End history. Within a year of its première it had…
ENO’s La traviata was so comprehensive a flop that it is painful to go into detail
Handel’s Rinaldo has not been highly regarded even by his most ardent admirers. I have never understood why — even…
Ave, Maria
Anyone who thinks that an artist’s life is irrelevant to their artistic achievement, and for that matter anyone who thinks…
Dressing up for the opera is not elitist
It’s June, and the country-house summer opera festivals are now in full swing. Glyndebourne, which opened the season last month,…
Opera North’s Coronation of Poppea: a premium-rate sex-line of an opera
Virtue, hide thyself! The Coronation of Poppea opens with a warning and closes with a love duet for a concubine…
The small rewards of small-scale opera
Neither OperaUpClose’s La traviata nor Finborough Theatre’s production of Boughton’s The Immortal Hour quite cut it
In defence of Puccini
During my opera-going lifetime the most sensational change in the repertoire has, of course, been the immense expansion of the…
I can’t see the point of Glyndebourne’s La traviata
One of the highlights of last year’s Glyndebourne Festival was the revival of Richard Jones’s Falstaff, spruced up and invigorated…
