Opera
This Hansel and Gretel has ‘classic’ stamped all over it
It’s been a good couple of weeks for cuddly toys in opera. A big floppy Eeyore is the only comfort…
At last, a great achievement at the Royal Opera: Macbeth reviewed
At last, a great time at the Royal Opera: a magnificent performance, in every way, of Verdi’s Macbeth, curiously but…
ENO’s La traviata was so comprehensive a flop that it is painful to go into detail
Handel’s Rinaldo has not been highly regarded even by his most ardent admirers. I have never understood why — even…
A short history of French musical decadence
My two attempts to see Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites at the Guildhall School were frustrated by the weather. Forced back…
A mischievous, daring production that produces the goods: Iolanthe reviewed
‘Welcome to our hearts again, Iolanthe!’ sings the fairy chorus in Gilbert and Sullivan’s fantasy-satire, and during this exuberant new…
A colossal bore: Royal Opera’s Carmen reviewed
The new production of Bizet’s Carmen at the Royal Opera has received mixed reviews. It shouldn’t have done. They should…
‘I was really, really scared’: Jonas Kaufmann opens up about his #MeToo moment
‘Hi, it’s Jonas.’ When the great tenor rings from Vienna, I ask if there are any topics he wants me…
Yet another dud Un ballo in maschera: Opera North’s new production reviewed
A chaste act of adultery and a silent conversation: these are the encounters at the heart of Un ballo in…
Celebrating Carter was one of the most energising musical occasions in years
Das Rheingold at the Royal Festival Hall was, all told, a disappointment, but it might not have been had there…
Royal Opera’s Tosca is a sloppy affair
One of the Royal Opera’s greatest virtues is the care it takes with its revivals, even those that are virtually…
More than ever, this was Ulysses’ show: Royal Opera’s Return of Ulysses reviewed
Spoiler alert: the final image of John Fulljames’s production of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses at the Roundhouse is haunting.…
The National Youth Orchestra showed that they’re the equal of any professional band
Everyone knows — don’t they? — that the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain is the UK’s youngest world-class symphony…
Debussy, Tippett and Wagner: the musical treats of 2018
Claude Debussy died on 25 March 1918 to the sound of explosions. Four days earlier, the Kaiser’s army had deployed…
A recording that makes you realise Les Troyens is one of the greatest operatic masterpieces
Grade: A- Berlioz’s Les Troyens, one of the greatest operatic masterpieces, manages to be neglected even if it is…
Composer Nico Muhly on drugs, cults and James MacMillan
There’s a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie in which Tippi Hedren is emptying a safe while a cleaning lady silently…
Musically superb but there isn’t a moment where one feels for anyone: Semiramide reviewed
The late arch-Rossinian Philip Gossett regarded Semiramide as a neoclassical work, vaguely and alarmingly suggesting to me a musical equivalent…
Excellent but there’s too much larking about: ENO’s Rodelinda reviewed
ENO has revived Richard Jones’s production of Handel’s Rodelinda. It was warmly greeted on its first outing in 2014, though…
Salon Strauss
An opera without singers, a Strauss orchestra of just 16, and an early music ensemble playing Mahler: welcome to the…
Soap opera
Previously on Giulio Cesare… English Touring Opera’s new season caters cannily to the box-set generation by chopping Handel’s Egyptian power-and-politics…
Pole position
Did you know that they used to make the Fiat 126 in the Eastern bloc? They did, apparently. There was…
Beauty and the beast
I was going to start with a little moan. About the shouty marketing, the digital diarrhoea, the sycophantic drivel, which,…
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…
