Donizetti
A keeper: ENO’s new The Elixir of Love reviewed
There was some light booing on the first night of English National Opera’s The Elixir of Love, but it was…
Tidal power
In David Alden’s production of Peter Grimes, the mob assembles before the music has even started – silhouetted at the…
The Muppet show
There are many things to enjoy in the Royal Opera’s revival of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, but perhaps the most surprising…
Kitchen-table opera
Covid has been many things to the arts — most of them unprintable. A plague, a scourge, a disaster from…
There will be blood
Lucia di Lammermoor is one of the two or three Donizetti operas that have never fallen out of the repertoire,…
Carmen v. Carmen
It’s been a busy operatic week, with a nearly great concert performance of Parsifal in Birmingham on Sunday (reviewed by…
Triple triumph
Three staples of the Italian repertoire, performed and seen in very different circumstances, have confirmed my view that they deserve…
Don’t look now
Mozart’s first great opera, Idomeneo, is not often performed, and perhaps it’s better that way. It should be seen as…
Femmes fatales
Three operas this week, each of them named after its (anti-)heroine: one of the heroines (the most sympathetic) murders her…
Long life
Back home from a week in Italy, I almost feel that I haven’t left. For I go almost at once…
