Royal opera house
Eroticism and ecstasy
Wayne McGregor’s Morgen! and Frederick Ashton’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits are the first pieces of live dance — streamed…
It’ll end in tears
It was the fourth time, or maybe the fifth, that I found myself reaching for the tissues that I began…
‘Opera is something you come to later’
After a record 18 years – and counting – as music director, Antonio Pappano talks to Norman Lebrecht about life after Covent Garden and how opera is beyond younger audiences
Follow the lieder
‘Popular’ classical music is a relative term. Show me someone who thinks Beethoven is surefire box office, and I’ll show……
Daffy charm and diabolo tricks: Bolshoi’s The Bright Stream reviewed
The Bright Stream is a ballet about a collective farm. Forget everything you know about collectivism — the failed harvests,…
Silly but stellar: Bolshoi Ballet’s Spartacus reviewed
It’s togas-a-go-go as the Bolshoi bring Yuri Grigorovich’s 1956 ballet Spartacus to the Royal Opera House. Oh dear, I did…
It’s not fair – I liked Il segreto di Susanna before it was cool: OHP’s double bill reviewed
Should a secret pleasure ever be shared? Spoiler alert: Susanna’s secret, unknown to her husband Gil, is that she smokes.…
One of the greatest operatic experiences of my life: Royal Opera’s Katya Kabanova reviewed
Janacek’s upsetting opera Katya Kabanova, which hasn’t been seen in the UK for some time, turned up in two different…
Proper tutus, gorgeous designs, first-rate dancing: Royal Ballet’s new Swan Lake reviewed
The Royal Ballet’s 2016 Frankenstein was a masterclass in how not to make narrative dance and the news that Liam…
Grief-conjurors, space-mincers and earth-shovellers: performance roundup
They enter two by two. Grannies, mainly. Headscarved, mainly. Some locking arms. A bit glum. Like rejects from Noah’s ark.…
A delicious operatic ragout of horror: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk reviewed
There is famously no door into the late-night diner of Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’. Its three silent patrons are trapped behind…
Reducing the lead to an demented rape victim is just what ballet needs: The Wind reviewed
A kindly cowboy, an East Coast bride, adultery, murder and madness. The Wind, Dorothy Scarborough’s 1925 Texas gothic novel (and…
Not vintage Mariinsky
Not really a vintage Mariinsky season — an odd choice of repertoire and some hit-and-miss male casting — but the…
Mad about the boy
Tall, handsome boys with long legs and beautifully arched feet do not grow on trees (if only). Every ballet director…
Myth-making
For years I have been telling people that they should listen to, in the absence of staged performances, Enescu’s opera…
Losing the plot
If a football manager produces a string of losses, the writing is on the wall and out he goes. He’s…
Fade to grey
Every ballet company wants a box-office earner. But why Scottish Ballet’s leader Christopher Hampson kept on at David Dawson until…
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…
Black magic
Ballet’s romantic mantra could be summed up by John Keats’s ballad ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’, in which a young…
ENO must go…
Last week Darren Henley, chief executive of Arts Council England, revealed that opera receives just under a fifth of the…
Bird brained
For all the billing and cooing on public forums about the Royal Ballet’s The Two Pigeons revival, there’s a silent…
Has there ever been a better time to be a lover of Baroque opera?
Time was when early music was a 6 p.m. concert, Baroque began with Bach and ended with Corelli’s Christmas Concerto,…
All at sea
The Royal Opera House seemed nervous about Georg Friedrich Haas’s world première Morgen und Abend. They sent out a pdf…
West End wannabe
The love that asks no questions, the love that pays the price… The amount of unconditional love sloshing about at…
