Wagner
Football vs opera, and the terror of being considered highbrow
Opera was hugely popular in Victorian Britain, but subsidies have doomed it to charges of ‘foreign elitism’ – as opposed to a ‘national passion, like football’
My debt to the teacher who introduced me to Wagner
We saw the world end in Berlin, again. Another Ring Cycle – hurrah! – in the beautiful Staatsoper theatre on…
How to handle the Wagner problem
There are deep ructions across Europe, as in Britain. All come down to the same thing. The societies in question…
Summer opera festivals have gone Wagner mad
Another week, another Wagner production at a summer opera festival. This never used to happen. When John Christie launched Glyndebourne…
Thrilling: Garsington’s Queen of Spades reviewed
Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades is one of those operas that under-promises on paper but over-delivers on stage. It’s hard…
Sincere, serious and beautiful: Glyndebourne’s Parsifal reviewed
‘Here time becomes space,’ says Gurnemanz in Act One of Parsifal, and true enough, the end of the new Glyndebourne…
Our half-time scorecard on the Royal Opera’s Ring cycle
With Die Walküre, the central themes of Barrie Kosky’s Ring cycle for the Royal Opera are starting to emerge, and…
Regents Opera’s Ring is a formidable achievement
I saw the world end in a Bethnal Green leisure centre. Regents Opera’s Ring cycle, which began in 2022 in…
Opera North’s Flying Dutchman scores a full house in cliché bingo
The overture to The Flying Dutchman opens at gale force. There’s nothing like it; Mendelssohn and Berlioz both painted orchestral…
‘La Scala was maddening’: an interview with John Macfarlane, the finest set designer of his generation
Pantomime season is upon us, and unless your taste in colour runs no further than Smarties, there is no more…
Letters: you can have a ‘good’ divorce
Splitting the difference Sir: Hannah Moore’s article ‘Split personalities’ (27 July) is brutal. ‘There’s no such thing as a kind…
Letters: You can grow to hate Wagner
Disappearing England Sir: Rod Liddle’s reference to Labour’s intention to build 1.5 million new houses (‘The great bee-smuggling scandal’, 13…
‘I’m a hypocrite and a total fraud’ – the confessions of a French Surrealist poet
My writing is mere bricolage … whatever I do, I only half do’, wails Michel Leiris in the final volume of his self-lacerating autobiography
Why I fell out of love with Wagner
It’s four years since I gave up opera criticism. The pandemic had struck, I had hit a significant birthday, and…
We have lost an unforgettable teacher and one of the greatest living critics
Tanner, the critic RICHARD BRATBY Michael Tanner (1935-2024), who died earlier this month, had such a vital mind and stood…
The Wagner uprising has left Putin isolated
Both Vladimir Putin and the mercenary Wagner Group have been dramatically weakened by yesterday’s attempted coup. Wagner’s nominal leader, Yevgeny…
This failed coup will be just the beginning
Yevgeny Prigozhin has just exposed the full extent of Vladimir Putin’s weakness. In less than 24 hours, the leader of…
Prigozhin leaves Rostov
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, has left Rostov-on-Don and ended the armed insurrection against Vladimir Putin.…
To die for
There are a lot of corpses on stage at the end of Charles Edwards’s production of Tristan & Isolde for…
Sublime – and ridiculous
It’s the final scene of The Valkyrie and Wotan is wearing cords. They’re a sensible choice for a hard-working deity:…
Grateful for large mercies
Glyndebourne is nothing if not honest. ‘In response to the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions our 2021 performances of Tristan und Isolde…
Slanging match
I’ve tried hard to think of someone I dislike enough to recommend this novel to, but have failed. Elfriede Jelinek…
Forget me not
No surprise: the greatest musical experience of my life was Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1962. I thought at the time…
Roger Scruton: A year in which much was lost – but more gained
January My 2018 ended with a hate storm, in response to my appointment as chair of the government’s Building…
