Mascagni
One beauty – one turkey: Wexford Festival Opera reviewed
‘Theatre within Theatre’ was the theme of the 2024 Wexford Festival and with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford’s The Critic, that’s…
Teenage kicks
For a one-hit composer, we hear rather a lot of Pietro Mascagni. His reputation rests on his 1890 debut Cavalleria…
Vintage Vick
At the end of Birmingham Opera Company’s RhineGold, as the gods stood ready to enter Valhalla, Donner swung a baseball…
Kitchen-table opera
Covid has been many things to the arts — most of them unprintable. A plague, a scourge, a disaster from…
Sadistic and repellent and thrilling: Mascagni’s Iris reviewed
If you’ve ever felt that poor Madama Butterfly had a bit of a raw deal, then you really, really don’t…
An embarrassing and misshapen dud: Opera Holland Park’s Isabeau reviewed
I’ve been trying to pinpoint the exact moment when it became impossible to take Mascagni’s Isabeau seriously. It wasn’t when…
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…
Triple triumph
Three staples of the Italian repertoire, performed and seen in very different circumstances, have confirmed my view that they deserve…
