Grange Park Opera
Brave and beautiful: Longborough’s Pelléas et Mélisande reviewed
King Arkel, in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, is almost blind, and he rules over a kingdom of darkness. Debussy’s score…
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…
To die for
There are a lot of corpses on stage at the end of Charles Edwards’s production of Tristan & Isolde for…
Naughty but very nice
Sir David Pountney, it appears, has been to Prague. He’s booked himself a mini-break, he’s EasyJetted out, and after (one…
Springtime for Putin
Alexander Litvinenko lies in a London hospital, dying of polonium poisoning. That photograph from 2006 haunts the memory: the medical…
Money, money – and music
Art is supposed to emerge from poverty but extreme wealth does not preclude talent, as the history of composers proves. By Richard Bratby
Tsar quality
There are worse inconveniences than having to wear a face mask to the opera. But there’s one consequence that hadn’t…
It’ll end in tears
It was the fourth time, or maybe the fifth, that I found myself reaching for the tissues that I began…
Can an Offenbach production be too silly? Garsington’s Fantasio reviewed
The tears of a clown have often fallen on fertile operatic ground. Think of Rigoletto and I Pagliacci; or The…
Sexy hints of affluence with top notes of fascism: Grange Park’s Roméo et Juliette reviewed
Patrick Mason’s new production of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette reminded me of something, but it took a while to work…
A full-on Freudian Oklahoma! at Grange Park Opera
Oh, what a beautiful morning! In Jo Davies’s production of Oklahoma! the audience spends the overture staring at the side…
New kid on the block
The new Grange Park Opera at Horsley is amazing, as everyone who visits it must agree. In less than a…
Lacking the light touch
To suggest that the ageing Jules Massenet identified himself with the title character of his Don Quichotte is nothing new…
