Don’t miss this dark Hansel and Gretel
The Three Choirs Festival always feels so nourishing, so eternally English, that you sometimes forget how much history has been…
The concert of the year
Ah, so that’s where the kangaroo comes in! Garsington Opera produces a souvenir mug each summer decorated with cartoons of…
A Sound of Music with brains as well as heart
If you’re interested in how words work with music, the collected lyrics of Stephen Sondheim are an investment you’ll never…
The finest music ever composed by a Breton naval officer
Grade: B+ There’s a special art in making something difficult appear effortless, and the string trio is a supreme test.…
Lisette Oropesa triumphs in I puritani
Vincenzo Bellini realised early on that as titles go, Le teste rotonde ed i cavalieri (The Roundheads and the Cavaliers)…
A spectacular new staging of L’Orfeo
Say what you like about Monteverdi, but he knew how to get his audience on side. ‘I greet you, heroes,…
An entertaining Rheingold from Grange Park Opera
Grange Park Opera has acquired a new chandelier for its theatre at West Horsley; a jumble of foliage and fairy…
Delightful Rossini at Glyndebourne
It’s impossible to say what Rossini would have made of Glyndebourne’s production of Il turco in Italia, but you can…
A first-class production of Puccini’s Western
Nature smiled on the opening week of Opera Holland Park’s new season. There’s no better advertisement for semi-outdoor opera than…
The joy of Martinu’s symphonies
Grade: A– What, more Martinu? It feels like no time since the Pavel Haas Quartet was persuading us that there…
The Arts Council’s bleak vision for the future of opera
English National Opera’s first production created in Manchester is Angel’s Bone, a one-act opera by Du Yun and the librettist…
In defence of Hindemith
There’s a photo of Paul Hindemith with the pianist Artur Schnabel on hands and knees, surrounded by model railway track.…
A spring mood lifter: Tales of Love and Loss at the Linbury Theatre reviewed
This year’s Jette Parker Artists showcase is a triple bill of modern-ish operas; a cleverly assembled trittico of one-acters, linked…
Is this the missing link between Bach and Haydn?
Grade: B ‘Is that Haydn or Mozart? One can’t always be sure,’ remarks Kenneth Clark in the 18th-century episode of…
The artistic collapse of Welsh National Opera
On the first night of Welsh National Opera’s new Flying Dutchman, the company’s co-directors walked on stage to salute their…
Heart-melting loveliness from John Rutter
Anyone for a spot of acoustic science? Apparently the distinctive colour of a musical note is concentrated almost wholly in…
An outstanding Turn of the Screw
Never let it be said that The Spectator fails to follow up an arts story. Long-term readers will recall that…
Royal Opera’s Siegfried is magnificent
Covent Garden’s new Ring cycle has reached Siegfried, and once again, you can only marvel at Wagner’s Shakespeare-like ability to…
Why the Goldberg Variations fill me with dread
Is Sir Andras Schiff becoming the Ken Dodd of the piano? In his later years, you’ll recall, the Yorick of…
Meet the world’s finest string quartet
Once upon a time in communist Hungary – 1975, in fact – four students at the Liszt Academy decided to…
Recordings have stunted us
Bring me my bow of burning gold; or failing that, the opening notes of Elgar’s Second Symphony. That’s how I’ve…
‘I didn’t expect to love Wagner’
By the end of Siegfried, the third opera in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, the king of the gods is…
