Opera
Where to start…
Whether by chance or bold design, the Royal Opera’s two Christmas shows were written at precisely the same moment, between…
Delusions of grandeur
Any adequate performance of Tristan und Isolde, and the first night of the Royal Opera’s production was at least that,…
A star is born
The Royal Academy of Music’s end-of-term opera can always be looked forward to because it never disappoints: the repertoire is…
Rameau resurrected
The poor French. When we think of classical music, we always think of the Germans. It’s understandable. Instinctive. Ingrained. But…
From the sacred to the secular
Terrorism; East-West diplomacy; nuclear war: John Adams’s operas have poured music into the faultlines of 21st-century global politics, and the…
Don’t look now
Mozart’s first great opera, Idomeneo, is not often performed, and perhaps it’s better that way. It should be seen as…
Russian revelation
Anyone who thinks opera singers and orchestral players are overworked should spare a thought for the Mariinsky Opera on its…
Sexy ladies
This season of live Met relays got off to a most impressive start, with an electrifying account of Verdi’s tenth…
Screwed up
We all know that ‘They fuck you up your mum and dad’, but nowhere is this more reliably (and violently)…
Blood and lust
Virtue, hide thyself! The Coronation of Poppea opens with a warning and closes with a love duet for a concubine…
Golden hearted
Puccini’s La fanciulla del West is, one suspects, one of those works that modern audiences struggle to keep a straight…
Revival MOT
One of the greatest tests of how an opera house is functioning is the quality of its revivals. Both the…
Robo-Tell
Is there a fundamental, insuperable problem with staging Rossini’s Guillaume Tell on a budget, without the resources to conjure up…
Douchebags and dartboards
So how did London’s two big opera companies launch their new seasons last week? Not perhaps in the way you…
Femmes fatales
Three operas this week, each of them named after its (anti-)heroine: one of the heroines (the most sympathetic) murders her…
Bad night for Berlioz
I wonder whether grand opéra really takes war as seriously as this year’s Edinburgh Festival wanted it to. These vast…
Small is not beautiful
Neither OperaUpClose’s La traviata nor Finborough Theatre’s production of Boughton’s The Immortal Hour quite cut it
Tainted love
During my opera-going lifetime the most sensational change in the repertoire has, of course, been the immense expansion of the…
Work in progress
The Salzburg Festival’s reputation might largely be one of cultural conservatism, but it made an impressive commitment to new works…
Flower power
Rather than brave the boos and the first reprise of Frank Castorf’s half-hearted Ring at Bayreuth, I decided to pay…
Triumphant Tannhäuser
Seventeen years ago the Norwegian National Opera staged two cycles of the Ring in Norwich’s Theatre Royal, performances that have…
High hopes
One of the highlights of last year’s Glyndebourne Festival was the revival of Richard Jones’s Falstaff, spruced up and invigorated…
Mixed blessings
Dvorak’s The Jacobin and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, the two operas that opened this year’s Buxton Festival, are both relative…
Close encounters
London is lucky to have heard Joyce DiDonato at the height of her powers in two consecutive seasons. The American…
Virtuoso Wagner
It seems a very short time since I interviewed Richard Farnes about Opera North’s planned Ring cycle, the dramas to…
