Opera
Coming up roses
At the turning point of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Der Rosenkavalier, all the clocks stop. Octavian has arrived…
The caged bird sings
At the first night of Glyndebourne Festival 2021 there was relief and joyful expectation as Gus Christie made his speech…
From screen to stage
It’s my new lockdown ritual. Switch on the telly, cue up the menu and scroll down to where the vintage…
The rise of opera film
I’m still waiting for the Royal Opera to step up. Nearly a year into the Covid crisis and what do…
Ambassador, you are really spoiling us
In classical music circles, Christmas arrives with the overture to Handel’s Messiah. Or so they’ll tell you. In truth, festivities…
Kitchen-table opera
Covid has been many things to the arts — most of them unprintable. A plague, a scourge, a disaster from…
Born of the moment
It’s quite a title sequence. Puccini swells on the soundtrack and words flash before your eyes. ‘Ecstatic!’ ‘Spellbound!’ ‘Passionate!’ ‘Dazzled!’…
One for the road
The email from English National Opera was blunt: ‘Your arrival time is 18.25. If you arrive outside your allocated time…
Magnificent muddle
In the 62 years since I first heard and saw Don Carlo, in the famous and long-lasting production by Visconti…
Enclosure acts
‘I don’t want to do my work. I want to go for a walk. I want to eat all the…
Versailles lockdown
A few years ago I interviewed an eminent baroque conductor. Prickly and professorial, tired after a day of rehearsals, he…
The Met goes Eurovision
Desperate times call for desperate measures. With the world’s opera houses currently dark, the New York Metropolitan Opera tackled the…
A perfect antidote
Anyone familiar with Joe Hill-Gibbins’s work will brace instinctively when the curtain goes up on his new Figaro. He’s the…
In a class of her own
Who was the most influential figure in 20th-century classical music? Stravinsky? Pierre Boulez? What about Bernstein or Britten? John Cage…
Eurotrash Verdi
Verdi’s Luisa Miller is set in the Tyrol in the early 17th century, and for some opera directors that’s a…
Fellatio-free
Calixto Bieito’s Carmen: three words to make an opera critic’s heart leap. Until quite recently, Bieito was the operatic provocateur…
More misogynistic than the original: ENO’s Orpheus in the Underworld reviewed
It’s Act Three of Emma Rice’s new production of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, and Eurydice (Mary Bevan) is trapped…
More Grace Kelly than Grace Jones: Welsh National Opera’s Carmen reviewed
How do you take your Carmen? Sun-drenched exotic fantasy with a side order of castanets, or cool and gritty, sour…
Why are so many operas by women adaptations of films by men?
Opera’s line of corpses — bloodied, battered, dumped in a bag — is a long one. Now it can add…
It’s not fair – I liked Il segreto di Susanna before it was cool: OHP’s double bill reviewed
Should a secret pleasure ever be shared? Spoiler alert: Susanna’s secret, unknown to her husband Gil, is that she smokes.…
An overcooked blowout: Glyndebourne’s Die Zauberflöte reviewed
Think back to when you were 12, and the sensation of re-opening your favourite book. (This is The Spectator; I’m…
Deft, elegant and genuinely chilling: Garsington’s Turn of the Screw reviewed
Think of the children in opera. Not knowing sopranos and mezzos, pigtailed and pinafored or tightly trousered-up to look child-like,…
Saved by the chorus
We’ve cried wolf with Handel. Ever since the modern trend began for staging the composer’s oratorios we’ve hailed each one…
Can an Offenbach production be too silly? Garsington’s Fantasio reviewed
The tears of a clown have often fallen on fertile operatic ground. Think of Rigoletto and I Pagliacci; or The…
The ideal summer opera: Garsington’s The Bartered Bride reviewed
So it’s the start of the summer opera season at Wormsley and we’re sitting there in evening dress in the…
