Opera
Falling down
This week, some 200 years since Goya’s ‘The Disasters of War’, almost 80 years after Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, and over 50…
His remastered voice
Damian Thompson on the audio anoraks rescuing some of the greatest recordings ever made
Hit parade
Before the jukebox musical, back when Mamma Mia!, Jersey Boys and Viva Forever! were still dollar-shaped glints in an as-yet-unborn…
The price of pleasure
Brecht/Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny was premièred in 1930, Auden/Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress in 1951. Twenty-one…
Gone girl
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson loved little girls. He loved to tell them stories, he loved to feed them jam, he loved…
Twin peaks
Is there a more beautiful aria than ‘O mio babbino caro’ from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi? There are more overwhelming moments…
Talent show
La Donna del Lago, based on a poem by Sir Walter Scott, is one of the nine serious, dramatic operas…
Master class
ENO’s new production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg is a triumph about which only the most niggling of reservations…
Farewell, ENO
It’s easy to forget what a mess of an art form opera once was. For its first 100 years it…
Crime and punishment
In one of the more peculiar concerts that I have been to at the Royal Festival Hall, Vladimir Jurowski conducted…
Heads will roll
Who on earth could have predicted that a hoary old operatic melodrama set in revolutionary France would find resonance in…
To hell and back
What a week to stage an opera about art’s power to challenge institutional authority, oppression — even death itself. Orfeo’s…
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,…
High and mighty
One of the most complete bars to the authentic performance of both baroque opera and some renaissance polyphony is the…
A London Christmas
I have been having my vault done over. Not, as you might think, the family strong room, but the place…
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…
There’s something about Mary
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
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…
I don’t care what you wear. I care what you believe
What sort of clothing do you wear when you go to the opera? I assume some of you do go…
Surviving the Soviets
Ismene Brown talks to the Russian super-couple Maya Plisetskaya and Rodion Shchedrin about ballet, opera and the KGB
Letters
Faith and flexibility Sir: What a contrast in your two articles on religion last week: one liberal atheist parent (Claire…
