Antonio Pappano
Our verdict on Pappano’s first months at the London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Antonio Pappano began 2024 as music director of the Royal Opera and ended as chief conductor of the London…
Manacorda’s thrills and spills at Prom 72
At a Hollywood party in the 1940s, the garrulous socialite Elsa Maxwell spotted Arnold Schoenberg, then teaching music at UCLA,…
Shiny, raunchy, heartless spectacular: Platée, at Garsington, reviewed
Fast times on Mount Olympus. Jupiter has been shagging around again and now his wife Juno has bailed on their…
All quiet on the western front
Zoe Strimpel talks to the anti-Putin Russian artists who have been cancelled since the invasion of Ukraine
A feast for the ears
Sir Hubert Parry was upgraded from knight bachelor to baronet by King Edward VII in 1902, and my goodness he…
Booster shots of sunlight
Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra began the year with a world première. Unsuk Chin’s Second Violin Concerto…
The alienation effect
‘People may say I can’t sing,’ said the soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, ‘but no one can ever say I didn’t…
‘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
The most glorious singing anyone born after 1970 will ever have heard: La forza del destino reviewed
To stage Verdi’s Il Trovatore, they say, is easy: you just need the four greatest singers in the world. The…
I genuinely liked Siegfried – which almost never happens: Royal Opera’s Ring cycle reviewed
‘On Brünnhilde’s rock I drew the breath that called your name; so swift was my journey here.’ It’s Act Two…
An unmitigated triumph: Salome at Opera North reviewed
Salome is my favourite opera by Richard Strauss, the only one where there is no danger, at any point, of…
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…
Director’s cut
Much fuss has been made of the title given to Sir Simon Rattle on arrival at the London Symphony Orchestra.…
DIY Bohème
The Royal Opera’s one production that, it has always confidently been claimed, need never be replaced has been replaced. John…
Original sin
The Royal Opera has bitten the bullet so far as Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov goes, and opted to stage the original…
Royal Opera’s Cavalleria rusticana isn’t nearly vulgar enough
How often do you get a chance to see two operas by Leoncavallo in the same city in the same…
Show and Tell
There’s no such thing as a tasteful rape scene — or there certainly shouldn’t be. It’s an act of grossest…
Ways of hearing
‘What gives your lies such power?’ asks the bewildered Sicilian leader in Szymanowski’s opera Krol Roger. The question is addressed…
Heads will roll
Who on earth could have predicted that a hoary old operatic melodrama set in revolutionary France would find resonance in…
Delusions of grandeur
Any adequate performance of Tristan und Isolde, and the first night of the Royal Opera’s production was at least that,…
Douchebags and dartboards
So how did London’s two big opera companies launch their new seasons last week? Not perhaps in the way you…
Sleazy does it
This season has already seen Manon Lescaut appear in several different operatic guises across the UK, but it was Covent…
Underpowered Wagner
Debussy’s description of the music of Parsifal as being ‘lit up from behind’ is famous; less so is Wagner’s own…
