La bohème
Naughty but very nice
Sir David Pountney, it appears, has been to Prague. He’s booked himself a mini-break, he’s EasyJetted out, and after (one…
Me time
I think it was when she leaned forward and balanced on one leg that Barbara Hannigan jumped the shark. It…
Bring me sunshine
Comedy’s a funny thing. No, seriously, the business of making people laugh is as fragile, as mercurial as cryptocurrency —…
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…
Follow the lieder
‘Popular’ classical music is a relative term. Show me someone who thinks Beethoven is surefire box office, and I’ll show……
![Gaelle Arquez as Carmen in Barrie Kosky's production at the Royal Opera. [Photo: ROH / Bill Cooper]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Opera.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Kosky’s Carmen is still the smartest show in town – and the most fun
It’s December, and while musical theatre is busy celebrating ‘warm woollen mittens’, opera, as usual, is far more interested in…
Small wonders
It has been a reasonably good week for peripatetic opera-loving female-underwear fetishists. In La bohème at Covent Garden Musetta slipped…
DIY Bohème
The Royal Opera’s one production that, it has always confidently been claimed, need never be replaced has been replaced. John…
Tainted love
During my opera-going lifetime the most sensational change in the repertoire has, of course, been the immense expansion of the…
Northern light
Purists might have winced at Opera North’s advertisement for its latest revival of La Bohème. ‘If you see one musical…
