Too hot to Handel
If directors will insist on staging Handel oratorios as if they’re operas, it makes sense to pick Semele, which is…
All’s well that ends well
Bernstein’s Candide is the operetta that ought to work, but never quite does. Voltaire’s featherlight cakewalk through human misery, set…
Testament of cliché
‘Ring out your bells for me, ivory keys! Weave out your spell for me, orchestra please!’ It’s lush stuff, the…
Featherweight fun
‘Goodness Triumphant’ is the subtitle of Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and you’d better believe he delivers. It’s the sweetest thing imaginable;…
Mysterious ways
The Chester Mystery Plays date back to the 13th century – but are more popular now than ever, finds Richard Bratby
Children of the revolution
The three Just Stop Oil protestors were sitting in the stalls, somewhere near the middle of the front row. Someone…
To die for
There are a lot of corpses on stage at the end of Charles Edwards’s production of Tristan & Isolde for…
Fire and fizz
Are you supposed to laugh at the end of Don Giovanni? Audiences often do, and they did at the end…
Florid flummery
Lightning sometimes strikes twice. English Touring Opera hit topical gold last spring when, wholly by coincidence, they found themselves touring…
No laughing matter
As stage directions go, the The Magic Flute opens with a zinger. ‘Tamino enters from the right wearing a splendid…
Upstart Crow without the jokes
The Swan Theatre has reopened after an overhaul and praise god: they’ve replaced the seats. The Swan is a likeable…
Modern myth
Plus: a striking production of an operatic dud at ENO
Heaven sent
Haydn’s The Creation is Paradise Lost without the Lost. True, the words aren’t exactly up there: translated into German by…
Catherine the great
Since its première in 1984, Andrei Serban’s production of Puccini’s Turandot has been revived 15 times at Covent Garden, not…
They’re creepy and they’re kooky
English National Opera has arrived at the Dead City, and who, before Christmas, would have given odds that this new…
Make mine a triple
It does no harm, once in a while, to assume that the creators of an opera actually know what they’re…
Hot stuff
Hector Berlioz dismissed Handel as ‘that tub of pork and beer’ but it wasn’t always like that. Picture a younger,…
Dated and dreadful
Careful what you wish for. There can be no definitive way to stage an opera, and it’s the critic’s duty…
On Finchleystrasse
Halfway up the stairs to the Royal College of Music’s exhibition Music, Migration & Mobility is a map of NW3,…
Revival of the fittest
Opera North has begun 2023 with a couple of big revivals, and it’s always rewarding to call in on these…
Screen time
A classical concert programme is like a set menu, and for this palate the most tempting orchestral offering in the…
Mersey boy
Daniel Barenboim was supposed to perform with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra earlier this month. His recent health concerns made…
