Opera
Prague
Prague. Prague. It helps to say the name at least twice as a countermeasure to the ridiculous ease of modern…
Director’s cut
Much fuss has been made of the title given to Sir Simon Rattle on arrival at the London Symphony Orchestra.…
Small wonders
It has been a reasonably good week for peripatetic opera-loving female-underwear fetishists. In La bohème at Covent Garden Musetta slipped…
Ave, Maria
Anyone who thinks that an artist’s life is irrelevant to their artistic achievement, and for that matter anyone who thinks…
DIY Bohème
The Royal Opera’s one production that, it has always confidently been claimed, need never be replaced has been replaced. John…
Viennese whirl
‘First performance: Vienna, October 3, 1880’ declares the programme for Opera della Luna’s new production of Johann Strauss’s The Queen’s…
Whatever happened to Alice?
In 1987, the art of opera changed decisively. John Adams’s opera Nixon in China was so unlike the usual run…
Grimes triumphant
‘Peter Grimes!’ Ranked high above us in the Usher Hall — a mob smelling blood, hot for the kill —…
Classy and classic
The Edinburgh International Festival began with a double helping of incest. Curiously, Greek — Mark-Anthony Turnage’s East End retelling of…
Strong stuff
The strings sweep upwards, the horns surge, and Leoncavallo’s Zaza throws itself into your arms. We don’t know it yet,…
New kid on the block
The new Grange Park Opera at Horsley is amazing, as everyone who visits it must agree. In less than a…
The supremes
When I interviewed Richard Farnes in Leeds six years ago about Opera North’s project of performing the complete Ring, he…
Myth-making
For years I have been telling people that they should listen to, in the absence of staged performances, Enescu’s opera…
Speech impediment
‘So you’re going to see the gay sex opera?’ exclaimed my friend, open-mouthed. People certainly seem to have had some…
Verdi
Verdi has a peculiar if not unique place in the pantheon of great composers. If you love classical music at…
Unsung hero
One of the greatest choral symphonies of the 20th century, entitled Das Siegeslied (Psalm of Victory), has been heard only…
Divine comedy
You have to be quite silly to take Gilbert and Sullivan seriously. But even sillier not to. G&S is still…
Deluded divas
Were Florence Foster Jenkins and her fellow culprits touchingly heroic, cynically fraudulent or just plain bonkers? Rupert Christiansen reports
Bell canto
Cursed, or perhaps blessed, with almost no visual memory at all, I had almost completely forgotten what the Royal Opera’s…
Striking the wrong note
Before we turn our attention to Florence Foster Jenkins — but if you can’t wait, it’s so-so — I feel…
Sound and vision
Janacek’s Jenufa, his first great opera, had a one-night stand at the Royal Festival Hall last Monday, courtesy of the…
Whose opera is it anyway?
Disguises and mistaken identities are a staple of opera, but usually as part of the onstage, not the offstage, action.…
There will be blood
Lucia di Lammermoor is one of the two or three Donizetti operas that have never fallen out of the repertoire,…
Comic relief
Comic opera is no laughing matter. Seriously, when was the last time you laughed out loud in the opera house?…
Modernist cul-de-sac
The intransigence of Maxwell Davies, Boulez and Stockhausen is coming home to roost. Here were three composers, famous if not…
