The sound of no hands clapping
‘We’re going to live for ever!’ declares Robert Powell as Gustav Mahler at the end of Ken Russell’s 1974 biopic.…
Viennese whirl
‘First performance: Vienna, October 3, 1880’ declares the programme for Opera della Luna’s new production of Johann Strauss’s The Queen’s…
Twin peaks
Schoenberg began Gurrelieder in 1900, but he didn’t hear it until 1913. By then, he’d moved on, and he ostentatiously…
Wilson’s sparkle and snap
Back in the period-instrument wars of the 1980s and ’90s, when the forces of historically informed performance smashed out of…
Classy and classic
The Edinburgh International Festival began with a double helping of incest. Curiously, Greek — Mark-Anthony Turnage’s East End retelling of…
High and low
‘Besides feeble writing, there is a mixture of tragic-comedy and buffoonery in it, which Apostolo Zeno and Metastasio had banished…
This new opera had the audience in tears
‘So you’re going to see the gay sex opera?’ exclaimed my friend, open-mouthed. People certainly seem to have had some…
Scottish Opera could have a hit on its hands with this new Mikado
You have to be quite silly to take Gilbert and Sullivan seriously. But even sillier not to. G&S is still…
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…
WNO reminds us Figaro's a comedy – which is no bad thing
Near the end of Elena Langer’s new opera Figaro Gets a Divorce, as the Almaviva household — now emigrés in…
Life-enhancing achievement: ENO's Magic Flute reviewed
Centre stage, there’s an industrial-looking black platform, secured by cables. The Three Ladies snap the unconscious Tamino on a mobile…
Conductor and orchestra played as if in love: Royal Opera’s Eugene Onegin reviewed
It’s scene five of Kasper Holten’s production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Michael Fabiano’s Lensky is alone with a snow-covered…
A devastating Jenufa - if you could hear it
About 15 minutes into act one of Jenufa, the student in the next seat leaned over to her companions and…
Opera in Edinburgh: even the best Stravinsky can’t beat mediocre Mozart
Is Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress anything more than an exercise in style? ‘I will lace each aria into a tight…
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