Opera
Royal Opera's Un ballo in maschera: limp, careless and scrappy
Whether by chance or bold design, the Royal Opera’s two Christmas shows were written at precisely the same moment, between…
Royal Opera’s Tristan und Isolde: an absurd production - but still a magnificent night
Any adequate performance of Tristan und Isolde, and the first night of the Royal Opera’s production was at least that,…
Does anyone have the balls to bring back castrati?
One of the most complete bars to the authentic performance of both baroque opera and some renaissance polyphony is the…
Penelope Lively’s notebook: Coal holes and pub opera
I have been having my vault done over. Not, as you might think, the family strong room, but the place…
Agents will be queuing up to sign this 26-year-old baritone from Sichuan
The Royal Academy of Music’s end-of-term opera can always be looked forward to because it never disappoints: the repertoire is…
Forget the Germans. It’s the French who made classical music what it is
The poor French. When we think of classical music, we always think of the Germans. It’s understandable. Instinctive. Ingrained. But…
ENO’s Gospel According to the Other Mary: great music weighed down by a worthy staging
Terrorism; East-West diplomacy; nuclear war: John Adams’s operas have poured music into the faultlines of 21st-century global politics, and the…
No one in the Bible has been as elaborately misrepresented as Mary Magdalene
A bogus history book and a new oratorio turn Mary Magdalene into the wife of Jesus and a human rights activist. Damian Thompson feels sorry for the poor woman
Mariinsky’s Boris Godunov - a revelation
Anyone who thinks opera singers and orchestral players are overworked should spare a thought for the Mariinsky Opera on its…
Met Opera Live's Macbeth: Netrebko's singing stirred almost as much as her décolletage
This season of live Met relays got off to a most impressive start, with an electrifying account of Verdi’s tenth…
Wear a veil if you like – but don’t treat women like that
What sort of clothing do you wear when you go to the opera? I assume some of you do go…
Maya Plisetskaya and Rodion Shchedrin: ‘The KGB put a microphone in our marriage bed’
Ismene Brown talks to the Russian super-couple Maya Plisetskaya and Rodion Shchedrin about ballet, opera and the KGB
Spectator letters: St Augustine and Louise Mensch, war votes and flannel
Faith and flexibility Sir: What a contrast in your two articles on religion last week: one liberal atheist parent (Claire…
ENO’s The Girl of the Golden West is irresistibly seductive
Puccini’s La fanciulla del West is, one suspects, one of those works that modern audiences struggle to keep a straight…
Royal Opera's Rigoletto: your disbelief may wobble but your excitement won't
One of the greatest tests of how an opera house is functioning is the quality of its revivals. Both the…
Robo-Tell hits Welsh National Opera
Is there a fundamental, insuperable problem with staging Rossini’s Guillaume Tell on a budget, without the resources to conjure up…
Winslow Hall shows you don’t need fancy sets to make opera enjoyable
Winslow Hall is a large and handsome country house in Buckinghamshire, built in 1700 by Sir Christopher Wren, which Tony…
Is Anna Nicole’s absurd life worth our while? Not as much as Otello’s
So how did London’s two big opera companies launch their new seasons last week? Not perhaps in the way you…
Michael Tanner: Why I prefer Donizetti to Strauss
Three operas this week, each of them named after its (anti-)heroine: one of the heroines (the most sympathetic) murders her…
The small rewards of small-scale opera
Neither OperaUpClose’s La traviata nor Finborough Theatre’s production of Boughton’s The Immortal Hour quite cut it
In defence of Puccini
During my opera-going lifetime the most sensational change in the repertoire has, of course, been the immense expansion of the…
Farewell, Speccie
So we are all going to have to pay for fatties to have stomach bands and bypasses, are we? It…
The rich have given up their freedom
The appointment of Sajid Javid as the new Secretary of State for Culture has been much criticised on the grounds…
Spectator letters: On wind turbines, Churchill's only exam success, and the red-trousered mayor of Bristol
When the wind blows Sir: Clare Oxford’s piece (‘Gone with the wind turbines’, 12 April) is both timely and sad.…
Leipzig and Dresden are both staging Elektra. Which city wins?
Yet more performances of Elektra, Richard Strauss’s setting of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s ramped-up, neurosis-riddled 1903 reworking of Sophocles, are unlikely…
