Royal opera house
The band that nearly saved the Cuban revolution
By chance, my first night in Havana in 1987 was the night the clubs went dark to mark the death…
‘Bewitching’: Krol Roger at the Royal Opera reviewed
‘What gives your lies such power?’ asks the bewildered Sicilian leader in Szymanowski’s opera Krol Roger. The question is addressed…
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 Fille mal gardee at the Royal Opera House reviewed: light, lithe and tender
The current talking-point at the Royal Ballet is the Russians milling around. One can sound unfortunately as if one’s starting…
Tippett’s triumphant failure: Birmingham Opera Company’s The Ice Break reviewed
The Ice Break is Michael Tippett’s fourth opera, first produced at Covent Garden in 1977 and rarely produced anywhere since,…
Royal Opera’s Tristan und Isolde: an absurd production - but still a magnificent night
Any adequate performance of Tristan und Isolde, and the first night of the Royal Opera’s production was at least that,…
Glyndebourne’s Turn of the Screw: horrors of the most innocent and creepy kind
We all know that ‘They fuck you up your mum and dad’, but nowhere is this more reliably (and violently)…
Ballet’s super couple should stick to the classical repertoire
Last week, the feast of long-awaited dance events on offer echoed bygone days when London life was dominated by the…
Royal Opera's Maria Stuarda: pathos and nobility from Joyce DiDonato, lazy nonsense from the directors
London is lucky to have heard Joyce DiDonato at the height of her powers in two consecutive seasons. The American…
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…
Jonathan Dimbleby’s notebook: In defence of Chris Patten
I usually spend most of the week at home in South Devon in front of my computer. But for the…
Romeo, Juliet and Mussolini
George Balanchine’s Serenade, the manifesto of 20th-century neoclassical choreography, requires a deep understanding of both its complex stylistic nuances and…
Two Mimi-Rodolfos at Opera North who go from nought to frisky very believably
Purists might have winced at Opera North’s advertisement for its latest revival of La Bohème. ‘If you see one musical…
Modern dance vs Shakespeare
In a dance world that has chosen to dispense with stylistic and semantic subtleties, ‘narrative ballet’ and ‘story ballet’ are…
The snobbery and sweaty brows of watching opera in the cinema
I remain puzzled that, so far as I know, no daily or weekly paper carries reviews of the New York…
The Royal Opera House's Die Frau ohne Schatten – a dream solution to Strauss’s problem opera?
If ever an opera was weighed down by its creators’ joint ambition, it is Die Frau ohne Schatten. Richard Strauss…
Bach is made for dancing
It appears that J.S. Bach’s music is to theatre-dance what whipped cream is to chocolate. Masterworks such as Trisha Brown’s…
Don Giovanni at his unsexiest
Every time there’s a new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni I have to ask the same question: why is this…
Overrated Strauss vs underrated Gluck
This is the first of my more-or-less monthly columns, the idea of which is to report on operatic events other…
The state of opera today (it's not good)
I’ve been hoping that in this, the last of my weekly columns on opera, I would be able to strike…
Parsifal has anxiety, rage, near-madness — unfortunately the Royal Opera's version doesn't
Debussy’s description of the music of Parsifal as being ‘lit up from behind’ is famous; less so is Wagner’s own…
The Royal Ballet's triple bill was danced to perfection
There was a time when the term ‘world première’ was not as fashionable as it is these days. Great works…
I hope you spotted the epic 'existential struggle' in Les vêpres siciliennes — I didn't
Verdi’s Les vêpres siciliennes is his least performed mature opera, even in its more familiar version as I vespri siciliani.…
Why do people talk such nonsense when describing opera? American Lulu and Le Nozze di Figaro reviewed
Why would anyone want to adapt Berg’s Lulu, a masterpiece even if a problematic one? According to John Fulljames, who…
A formidable cast for Covent Garden’s Capriccio
Richard Strauss’s operatic swansong Capriccio made an elegant and untaxing conclusion to the Royal Opera’s season. It was done in…
