Offenbach
Fails to ignite: Royal Opera’s Tales of Hoffmann reviewed
I couldn’t love anyone who didn’t love Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Everything – everything – is stacked against this…
More depravity, please
The first night of the new season at Covent Garden was cancelled when the solemn news came through. The second…
Divine comedy
Arthur Sullivan knew better than to mess with a winning formula. ‘Cox and Box, based on J. Maddison Morton’s farce…
Panto at Glyndebourne
Offenbach at Glyndebourne! Short of Die Soldaten with a picnic break or a period-instrument revival of Jerry Springer: The Opera,…
The joy of going to a real concert…
I went to a concert! Not a livestream or download: a real concert, with real musicians, a real conductor, a…
More misogynistic than the original: ENO’s Orpheus in the Underworld reviewed
It’s Act Three of Emma Rice’s new production of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, and Eurydice (Mary Bevan) is trapped…
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…
Straight talking
It’s widely agreed that the most difficult form of opera to bring off is operetta, whether of the Austro-German or…
I doubt Goethe intended Werther’s sorrows to be as unremitting as this
There are some things the French do better than everyone else. Cheese, military defeats and extra-marital affairs are a given,…
