Rimsky-Korsakov
The BBC Singers Centenary Concert was toe-curling
When does a new opera enter the repertoire? Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert has only had a couple of UK productions…
Pitch-black satire drenched in an atmosphere of compelling unease: ETO's Golden Cockerel reviewed
Blame it on Serge Diaghilev. Rimsky-Korsakov died in 1908 and never saw the première of his last opera, The Golden…
The genius of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker score
The enduring appeal of The Nutcracker. Tchaikovsky’s ravishing score is nothing less than the sound of Christmas
Wow, this is good: Grange Park Opera's Ivan the Terrible reviewed
There are worse inconveniences than having to wear a face mask to the opera. But there’s one consequence that hadn’t…
How to make a Christmas ballet hit: behind the scenes at Scottish Ballet’s Snow Queen
Ballet, like bread sauce and green chartreuse, is often just a Christmas thing and the UK’s national companies plan their…
The greatest British opera after Dido and Grimes? Vaughan Williams’s Riders to the Sea
In a remote fishing village a lone figure confronts an unexplained death, standing tormented but unbroken against fate, the community…
An unqualified triumph: Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera reviewed
The Royal Opera has bitten the bullet so far as Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov goes, and opted to stage the original…
Why do we pounce on Wagner's anti-Semitism, and ignore that of the Russian composers?
Philip Hensher on how an impassioned, chaotic group of amateur 19th-century composers created the first distinctively Russian music
