Royal Opera

Inside Apollo’s head: designer Steffen Aarfing following Szymanowski’s stage instructions

‘Bewitching’: Krol Roger at the Royal Opera reviewed

9 May 2015 9:00 am

‘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 (Photo: Tristram Kenton)

Il turco in Italia, Royal Opera House, reviewed: bring sunglasses

25 April 2015 9:00 am

Big slats of orange, burning yellows, an Adriatic in electric blue: I wish I’d bought my sunglasses to the Royal…

Tippett’s triumphant failure: Birmingham Opera Company’s The Ice Break reviewed

11 April 2015 9:00 am

The Ice Break is Michael Tippett’s fourth opera, first produced at Covent Garden in 1977 and rarely produced anywhere since,…

Left to right: Peter Hoare (Fatty), Anne Sofie von Otter (Leocadia Begbick), Willard White (Trinity Moses)

Royal Opera's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny review: far too well behaved

21 March 2015 9:00 am

Brecht/Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny was premièred in 1930, Auden/Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress in 1951. Twenty-one…

Starry night: Iain Patterson as Sachs and Andrew Shore as Beckmesser in a triumphant ‘Mastersingers of Nuremberg’

Mastersingers of Nuremberg, ENO, review: ‘a triumph’

14 February 2015 9:00 am

ENO’s new production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg is a triumph about which only the most niggling of reservations…

Royal Opera’s Orfeo, Roundhouse: shouts its agenda so loudly the music struggles to be heard

17 January 2015 9:00 am

What a week to stage an opera about art’s power to challenge institutional authority, oppression — even death itself. Orfeo’s…

Royal Opera's Un ballo in maschera: limp, careless and scrappy

10 January 2015 9:00 am

Whether by chance or bold design, the Royal Opera’s two Christmas shows were written at precisely the same moment, between…

Magnificent: Nina Stemme as Isolde and Stephen Gould as Tristan

Royal Opera’s Tristan und Isolde: an absurd production - but still a magnificent night

3 January 2015 9:00 am

Any adequate performance of Tristan und Isolde, and the first night of the Royal Opera’s production was at least that,…

Too worthy? Peter Sellars’s staging of John Adams’s ‘Gospel’

ENO’s Gospel According to the Other Mary: great music weighed down by a worthy staging

29 November 2014 9:00 am

Terrorism; East-West diplomacy; nuclear war: John Adams’s operas have poured music into the faultlines of 21st-century global politics, and the…

Franco Fagioli: a controversial Idamante in ‘Idomeneo’ at the Royal Opera House

Royal Opera’s Idomeneo: get seats but make sure they’re facing away from the stage

15 November 2014 9:00 am

Mozart’s first great opera, Idomeneo, is not often performed, and perhaps it’s better that way. It should be seen as…

Alice Coote and Sarah Tynan in ‘Xerxes’ at ENO

Royal Opera's Rigoletto: your disbelief may wobble but your excitement won't

4 October 2014 9:00 am

One of the greatest tests of how an opera house is functioning is the quality of its revivals. Both the…

Robo-Tell hits Welsh National Opera

27 September 2014 9:00 am

Is there a fundamental, insuperable problem with staging Rossini’s Guillaume Tell on a budget, without the resources to conjure up…

Eloquent: Allan Clayton as Cassio in Otello

Is Anna Nicole’s absurd life worth our while? Not as much as Otello’s

20 September 2014 9:00 am

So how did London’s two big opera companies launch their new seasons last week? Not perhaps in the way you…

Romeo and Juliet: a Mariinsky masterclass

9 August 2014 9:00 am

According to some textbooks, one thing the fathers of Soviet choreography hastened to remove from ballet was that awkward-looking language…

Barbie doll: Kristine Opolais as Manon

Manon Lescaut: Puccini’s Anna Nicole?

28 June 2014 9:00 am

This season has already seen Manon Lescaut appear in several different operatic guises across the UK, but it was Covent…

Bryn Terfel as Méphistophélès and Simon Keenlyside as Valentin in ‘Faust

Bryn Terfel lords it over 'Faust' magnificently

19 April 2014 9:00 am

There’s a great deal to disapprove of in Gounod’s Faust. It breaks down a pillar of western literature and whisks…

Simon Keenlyside and John Tomlinson in ‘Wozzeck’

Keith Warner's Wozzeck doesn't make me as angry as it used to

9 November 2013 9:00 am

When Keith Warner’s production of Berg’s Wozzeck was first produced at the Royal Opera, nine years ago, it made me…

Carlos Acosta’s Don Quixote lacks the wow factor

5 October 2013 9:00 am

Superstar Carlos Acosta makes little or no reference to Don Quixote’s established history in his programme note about the genesis…

A sensational week for opera: sensationally good and sensationally bad

5 October 2013 9:00 am

It’s been a sensational week for opera in London, with a sensationally good performance of Strauss’s Elektra at the Royal…

Winningly diminutive: Eri Nakamura as Liù

Turandot is a disgusting opera that is beyond redemption

21 September 2013 9:00 am

It’s a cynical start to the Royal Opera’s season to have this 1984 production of Puccini’s last opera Turandot. Not…

Ekaterina Krysanova and Vyacheslav Lopatin in Balanchine’s ‘Rubies’

A masterclass in stage presence from the Bolshoi

17 August 2013 9:00 am

Jewels is everything a George Balanchine admirer could ask for. The sumptuous triptych, set to scores by Fauré, Stravinsky and…