Royal Opera
All roads lead to Callas
Bellini belongs to that category of not-quite-great operatic composers whose works are also very difficult to perform adequately, and don’t…
Shaw hand
When is a rape not a rape? It’s an unsettling question — far more so than anything offered up by…
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…
Better than Bayreuth
Which of Wagner’s mature dramas is the most challenging, for performers and spectators? The one you’re seeing at the moment,…
Ways of hearing
‘What gives your lies such power?’ asks the bewildered Sicilian leader in Szymanowski’s opera Krol Roger. The question is addressed…
Off colour
Big slats of orange, burning yellows, an Adriatic in electric blue: I wish I’d bought my sunglasses to the Royal…
Beauty and the bleak
The Ice Break is Michael Tippett’s fourth opera, first produced at Covent Garden in 1977 and rarely produced anywhere since,…
The price of pleasure
Brecht/Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny was premièred in 1930, Auden/Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress in 1951. Twenty-one…
Master class
ENO’s new production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg is a triumph about which only the most niggling of reservations…
To hell and back
What a week to stage an opera about art’s power to challenge institutional authority, oppression — even death itself. Orfeo’s…
Where to start…
Whether by chance or bold design, the Royal Opera’s two Christmas shows were written at precisely the same moment, between…
Delusions of grandeur
Any adequate performance of Tristan und Isolde, and the first night of the Royal Opera’s production was at least that,…
From the sacred to the secular
Terrorism; East-West diplomacy; nuclear war: John Adams’s operas have poured music into the faultlines of 21st-century global politics, and the…
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…
Revival MOT
One of the greatest tests of how an opera house is functioning is the quality of its revivals. Both the…
Robo-Tell
Is there a fundamental, insuperable problem with staging Rossini’s Guillaume Tell on a budget, without the resources to conjure up…
Douchebags and dartboards
So how did London’s two big opera companies launch their new seasons last week? Not perhaps in the way you…
Simple pleasures
According to some textbooks, one thing the fathers of Soviet choreography hastened to remove from ballet was that awkward-looking language…
Sleazy does it
This season has already seen Manon Lescaut appear in several different operatic guises across the UK, but it was Covent…
Gleeful romp
There’s a great deal to disapprove of in Gounod’s Faust. It breaks down a pillar of western literature and whisks…
Third time lucky
When Keith Warner’s production of Berg’s Wozzeck was first produced at the Royal Opera, nine years ago, it made me…
Don Q lite
Superstar Carlos Acosta makes little or no reference to Don Quixote’s established history in his programme note about the genesis…
Sensational Strauss
It’s been a sensational week for opera in London, with a sensationally good performance of Strauss’s Elektra at the Royal…
Beyond redemption
It’s a cynical start to the Royal Opera’s season to have this 1984 production of Puccini’s last opera Turandot. Not…
A trio of gems
Jewels is everything a George Balanchine admirer could ask for. The sumptuous triptych, set to scores by Fauré, Stravinsky and…
