Wagner

If you want to know how music really works listen to Classic FM not Radio 3

7 May 2016 9:00 am

He’s been billed as the new Pied Piper but it’s going to take a while for Tom Service to quite…

First Dates is perfectly formed TV

2 April 2016 9:00 am

Now the kids are back for the school holidays, I have a licence to watch complete trash again. No more…

Norma at the ENO (Photo: Alastair Muir)

Long live ENO!

27 February 2016 9:00 am

The three most moving, transporting death scenes in 19th-century opera all involve the respective heroines mounting a funeral pyre —…

Annemarie Kremer as Maddelena. Photo Credit: Robert Workman

Miserable libretto, music to match: Andrea Chénier reviewed

30 January 2016 9:00 am

Opera North continues to be the most reliable, inspiring, resourceful and enterprising opera company in the United Kingdom, and all…

Spare us this unanimous chorus of praise for Pierre Boulez

16 January 2016 9:00 am

Pierre Boulez, who died last week at the age of 90, would have been the last person, one hopes, to…

How the Germans made Glyndebourne

21 November 2015 9:00 am

This is hardly the time of year for picnics on the lawn, but I have nevertheless had a week dominated…

Late Brahms is wonderfully crafted - which is why it's so dull

21 November 2015 9:00 am

Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet begins, writes his biographer Jan Swafford, with ‘a gentle, dying-away roulade that raises a veil of autumnal…

Going ape: Bertie Carvel as Yank

Glyndebourne caters to the lower-middle classes not past-it toffs

7 November 2015 9:00 am

What is Glyndebourne? A middle-aged Bullingdon. That’s a common view: a luxury bun fight for past-it toffs who glug champagne,…

The finest Tristan since Siegfried Jerusalem

27 June 2015 9:00 am

Which of Wagner’s mature dramas is the most challenging, for performers and spectators? The one you’re seeing at the moment,…

Lunch with a claret fit for gods, heroes and David Cameron

20 June 2015 9:00 am

I cannot remember a jollier lunch. There are two brothers, Sebastian and Nicholas Payne, both practical epicureans. They have made…

Miriam Gross’s diary: Why use Freud and Kurt Weill to promote Wagner?

7 March 2015 9:00 am

Last week I went to the exhilarating English National Opera production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers — five hours of wonderful…

Starry night: Iain Patterson as Sachs and Andrew Shore as Beckmesser in a triumphant ‘Mastersingers of Nuremberg’

Mastersingers of Nuremberg, ENO, review: ‘a triumph’

14 February 2015 9:00 am

ENO’s new production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg is a triumph about which only the most niggling of reservations…

An artistic crime is committed at the Royal Festival Hall

31 January 2015 9:00 am

In one of the more peculiar concerts that I have been to at the Royal Festival Hall, Vladimir Jurowski conducted…

Magnificent: Nina Stemme as Isolde and Stephen Gould as Tristan

Royal Opera’s Tristan und Isolde: an absurd production - but still a magnificent night

3 January 2015 9:00 am

Any adequate performance of Tristan und Isolde, and the first night of the Royal Opera’s production was at least that,…

In Norwich, a director is caught trying to murder Wagner’s Tannhäuser

2 August 2014 9:00 am

Seventeen years ago the Norwegian National Opera staged two cycles of the Ring in Norwich’s Theatre Royal, performances that have…

In the mood for Parsifal, my Passiontide fare

19 April 2014 9:00 am

This week, I have been mostly listening to Parsifal. Not the St Matthew Passion, which is my usual Passiontide fare.…

Parsifal has anxiety, rage, near-madness — unfortunately the Royal Opera's version doesn't

14 December 2013 9:00 am

Debussy’s description of the music of Parsifal as being ‘lit up from behind’ is famous; less so is Wagner’s own…

Alexander Chancellor: A slice of Italy in Milton Keynes

30 November 2013 9:00 am

Back home from a week in Italy, I almost feel that I haven’t left. For I go almost at once…

Who cares if Wagner’s 200? The plague of the anniversary

24 August 2013 9:00 am

Centenaries now seem to be the only reason that publishers and concert planners do anything at all

Wagner at the Proms

17 August 2013 9:00 am

It would be interesting to know why Tristan und Isolde was placed in the Proms programme in between Siegfried and…

Roger Scruton’s diary: Finding Scrutopia in the Czech Republic

10 August 2013 9:00 am

Hay-making was easy this year, and over in good time for a holiday. I am opposed to holidays, having worked…

Is this the best Ring ever?

10 August 2013 9:00 am

The first complete performance of Wagner’s Ring cycle at the Proms is already, less than a week after its conclusion,…

Give us our gold: the Rhinemaidens in ‘Das Rheingold’ at Longborough

Opera review: Longborough's tiny stage takes on the Ring - and wins

20 July 2013 9:00 am

There are no two ways about it: Wagner’s Ring cycle, the biggest challenge that any opera company can face, has…