Rimsky-Korsakov
The BBC Singers Centenary Concert was toe-curling
When does a new opera enter the repertoire? Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert has only had a couple of UK productions…
Bird brained
Blame it on Serge Diaghilev. Rimsky-Korsakov died in 1908 and never saw the première of his last opera, The Golden…
From Russia with love
The enduring appeal of The Nutcracker. Tchaikovsky’s ravishing score is nothing less than the sound of Christmas
Tsar quality
There are worse inconveniences than having to wear a face mask to the opera. But there’s one consequence that hadn’t…
How to make a Christmas ballet hit: behind the scenes at Scottish Ballet’s Snow Queen
Ballet, like bread sauce and green chartreuse, is often just a Christmas thing and the UK’s national companies plan their…
The kids are all right
In a remote fishing village a lone figure confronts an unexplained death, standing tormented but unbroken against fate, the community…
Original sin
The Royal Opera has bitten the bullet so far as Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov goes, and opted to stage the original…
Nationalist stirrings
Philip Hensher on how an impassioned, chaotic group of amateur 19th-century composers created the first distinctively Russian music
