Golden hearted
Puccini’s La fanciulla del West is, one suspects, one of those works that modern audiences struggle to keep a straight…
Robo-Tell
Is there a fundamental, insuperable problem with staging Rossini’s Guillaume Tell on a budget, without the resources to conjure up…
Bad night for Berlioz
I wonder whether grand opéra really takes war as seriously as this year’s Edinburgh Festival wanted it to. These vast…
Small is not beautiful
Neither OperaUpClose’s La traviata nor Finborough Theatre’s production of Boughton’s The Immortal Hour quite cut it
Work in progress
The Salzburg Festival’s reputation might largely be one of cultural conservatism, but it made an impressive commitment to new works…
Flower power
Rather than brave the boos and the first reprise of Frank Castorf’s half-hearted Ring at Bayreuth, I decided to pay…
High hopes
One of the highlights of last year’s Glyndebourne Festival was the revival of Richard Jones’s Falstaff, spruced up and invigorated…
Mixed blessings
Dvorak’s The Jacobin and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, the two operas that opened this year’s Buxton Festival, are both relative…
Close encounters
London is lucky to have heard Joyce DiDonato at the height of her powers in two consecutive seasons. The American…
Sleazy does it
This season has already seen Manon Lescaut appear in several different operatic guises across the UK, but it was Covent…
Lacking the light touch
To suggest that the ageing Jules Massenet identified himself with the title character of his Don Quichotte is nothing new…
That’s entertainment
Operas about artists are not rare. However — perhaps for obvious reasons — those artists tend to be musicians, singers,…
People and their prophets
On paper, Moses und Aron might seem intractable and abstract: a 12-tone score setting a libretto that meditates on God,…
Loss of heart
In all its minute details, Der Rosenkavalier is rooted in a painstakingly stylised version of Rococo Vienna that, paradoxically, is…
Northern light
Purists might have winced at Opera North’s advertisement for its latest revival of La Bohème. ‘If you see one musical…
Oedipus wrecks
I had high hopes for Julian Anderson’s first opera, Thebans. Premièred at the Coliseum last Saturday, it promised to mark…
Just say noh
One of the proudest boasts to come from Britten HQ in Aldeburgh during the composer’s anniversary last year was that…
Gleeful romp
There’s a great deal to disapprove of in Gounod’s Faust. It breaks down a pillar of western literature and whisks…
Going places
It’s been a spring tradition for several years now for English National Opera to present small-scale productions in various venues…
Preparatory studies
Opera seems almost always to have been acutely concerned with its own future. These days this is most often manifested…
Dream team
If ever an opera was weighed down by its creators’ joint ambition, it is Die Frau ohne Schatten. Richard Strauss…
Moral vacuum
Opera’s grim fascination with ‘fallen women’ — as Welsh National Opera has called its latest mini-season — lies largely in…
Austerity measures
The difference between lovable, likable and admirable is perhaps more significant in the operatic world than in other artistic spheres…
German double
Yet more performances of Elektra, Richard Strauss’s setting of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s ramped-up, neurosis-riddled 1903 reworking of Sophocles, are unlikely…
