Is there a funnier opera than Gerald Barry’s Importance of Being Earnest?
Comic opera is no laughing matter. Seriously, when was the last time you laughed out loud in the opera house?…
Comic relief
Comic opera is no laughing matter. Seriously, when was the last time you laughed out loud in the opera house?…
Comic relief
Comic opera is no laughing matter. Seriously, when was the last time you laughed out loud in the opera house?…
Has there ever been a better time to be a lover of Baroque opera?
Time was when early music was a 6 p.m. concert, Baroque began with Bach and ended with Corelli’s Christmas Concerto,…
Has there ever been a better time to be a lover of Baroque opera?
Time was when early music was a 6 p.m. concert, Baroque began with Bach and ended with Corelli’s Christmas Concerto,…
Has there ever been a better time to be a lover of Baroque opera?
Time was when early music was a 6 p.m. concert, Baroque began with Bach and ended with Corelli’s Christmas Concerto,…
Irish ayes
It’s Halloween, and right on lightning-flash cue enters an operatic ghost story exhumed from the grave of long-since-buried works. You…
Irish ayes
It’s Halloween, and right on lightning-flash cue enters an operatic ghost story exhumed from the grave of long-since-buried works. You…
Mascagni’s Guglielmo Ratcliff deserves to become a classic
It’s Halloween, and right on lightning-flash cue enters an operatic ghost story exhumed from the grave of long-since-buried works. You…
I doubt Goethe intended Werther's sorrows to be as unremitting as this
There are some things the French do better than everyone else. Cheese, military defeats and extra-marital affairs are a given,…
I doubt Goethe intended Werther’s sorrows to be as unremitting as this
There are some things the French do better than everyone else. Cheese, military defeats and extra-marital affairs are a given,…
I doubt Goethe intended Werther’s sorrows to be as unremitting as this
There are some things the French do better than everyone else. Cheese, military defeats and extra-marital affairs are a given,…
The polyphonous Babel of global music
‘Following custom, when the Siamese conquered the Khmer they carried off much of the population, including most of their musicians,…
McVicar’s Figaro looks increasingly fossilised. Time for the Royal Opera to ditch it
Is there a more extraordinary, more heart-stilling moment in all opera than the finale of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro?…
Fossilised Figaro
Is there a more extraordinary, more heart-stilling moment in all opera than the finale of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro?…
Fossilised Figaro
Is there a more extraordinary, more heart-stilling moment in all opera than the finale of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro?…
Don’t listen to Amadeus - this Salieri opera is better than Mozart
Magical transformations are a commonplace of opera. We see our heroes turned into animals, trees, statues; witness wild beasts turned…
When is a rape not a rape? Fiona Shaw's Rape of Lucretia at Glyndebourne reviewed
When is a rape not a rape? It’s an unsettling question — far more so than anything offered up by…
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…
Bartók would have made history even if he’d never composed a note
‘All my life, always and in every way, I shall have one objective: the good of Hungary and the Hungarian…
Do you see me laughing? Mike Leigh’s Pirates of Penzance at the ENO reviewed
Forget the pollsters and political pundits — English National Opera called it first and called it Right when it programmed…
ENO's Between Worlds at the Barbican reviewed: too respectful
This week, some 200 years since Goya’s ‘The Disasters of War’, almost 80 years after Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, and over 50…
Why we should revel in the empty virtuosity of Handel's pasticcios
Before the jukebox musical, back when Mamma Mia!, Jersey Boys and Viva Forever! were still dollar-shaped glints in an as-yet-unborn…
ENO's Indian Queen reviewed: Peter Sellars's bold new production needs editing
When is an opera not an opera? How much can you strip and peel away, or extend and graft on…
Royal Opera’s Orfeo, Roundhouse: shouts its agenda so loudly the music struggles to be heard
What a week to stage an opera about art’s power to challenge institutional authority, oppression — even death itself. Orfeo’s…
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