Salome
More depravity, please
The first night of the new season at Covent Garden was cancelled when the solemn news came through. The second…
Which Mary is which?
Is there a patron saint of conjecture? Perhaps it is a name known only to Bible scholars, who have rich…
Rottweilers in frocks
It’s a rum beast the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Cinderella is set in Belleville, a European city of 18th-century…
Uplift
If eight weeks in lockdown have brought out my baser impulses (biscuits by the sleeve, total renunciation of waistbands), it’s…
Naughty boy
In seven short years, Aubrey Beardsley mastered the art of outrage. Laura Gascoigne on the gloriously indecent illustrations of a singular genius
![A woman-child of dangerous assurance: Allison Cook as Salome in Adena Jacobs’s new production for English National Opera. [Catherine Ashmore]](https://new-dev.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/6Octopera.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
A fascinating failure, but a failure nonetheless: ENO’s Salome reviewed
Yes, Oscar Wilde never wrote it. No, Strauss didn’t intend it. In fact, the composer famously demanded the Dance of…
An unmitigated triumph: Salome at Opera North reviewed
Salome is my favourite opera by Richard Strauss, the only one where there is no danger, at any point, of…
Femmes fatales
Three operas this week, each of them named after its (anti-)heroine: one of the heroines (the most sympathetic) murders her…
