Rossini
Florid flummery: ETO’s Il viaggio a Reims reviewed
Lightning sometimes strikes twice. English Touring Opera hit topical gold last spring when, wholly by coincidence, they found themselves touring…
Comedy genius: Garsington Opera's Le Comte Ory reviewed
Melons. An absolutely cracking pair of melons, right there on a platter: the centrepiece of the banquet that the chaste,…
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…
Musically superb but there isn’t a moment where one feels for anyone: Semiramide reviewed
The late arch-Rossinian Philip Gossett regarded Semiramide as a neoclassical work, vaguely and alarmingly suggesting to me a musical equivalent…
Cruel and absurd: WNO’s Barber of Seville reviewed
‘Forget Downton Abbey!’ exhorts David Pountney in the programme for Figaro Forever, Welsh National Opera’s season of Beaumarchais operas, The…
The gang rape was the least offensive thing about Royal Opera's new William Tell
There’s no such thing as a tasteful rape scene — or there certainly shouldn’t be. It’s an act of grossest…
Il turco in Italia, Royal Opera House, reviewed: bring sunglasses
Big slats of orange, burning yellows, an Adriatic in electric blue: I wish I’d bought my sunglasses to the Royal…
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…
ENO’s The Girl of the Golden West is irresistibly seductive
Puccini’s La fanciulla del West is, one suspects, one of those works that modern audiences struggle to keep a straight…
Robo-Tell hits Welsh National Opera
Is there a fundamental, insuperable problem with staging Rossini’s Guillaume Tell on a budget, without the resources to conjure up…
Mariinsky’s Les Troyens — a bad night for Berlioz and Edinburgh
I wonder whether grand opéra really takes war as seriously as this year’s Edinburgh Festival wanted it to. These vast…
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…
