fri 09/05/2025

Opera reviews, news and interviews

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Theartsdesk

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and eclectic team of arts and culture writers went ahead with an ambitious plan – to launch a dedicated internet site devoted to coverage of the UK arts scene.

The Excursions of Mr Brouček, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - sensuousness, fire and comedy in perfect balance

David Nice

Who doesn’t love the quirky, passionate and humanitarian genius of Leoš Janáček? All of it, these days. Since Charles Mackerras introduced the UK to a then-unknown, even the less familiar operas have had plenty of exposure. Simon Rattle was among the champions, giving an early concert performance (the UK premiere, I think) of the astonishing Osud (Fate). Now he's performing and recording them all with the London Symphony Orchestra.

 

Pimpinone, Royal Opera in the Linbury Theatre...

David Nice

Full marks to the Royal Opera for good planning: one first night knocking us all sideways with the darkest German operatic tragedy followed by...

Die Walküre, Royal Opera review - total music...

David Nice

Wagner’s universe, in the second of his Ring operas which brings semi-humans on board to challenge the gods, matches exaltation and misery, terror...

Simon Boccanegra, Opera North review - ‘dramatic...

Robert Beale

Opera North have recently pioneered a way of presenting some big works which they call “dramatic concert stagings”, performing in concert halls as...

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Peter Grimes, Welsh National Opera review - febrile energy and rage

Stephen Walsh

In every sense a tour de force

Owen Wingrave, RNCM, Manchester review - battle of a pacifist

Robert Beale

Orpha Phelan brings on the big guns for Britten’s charge against war

Tales of Apollo and Hercules, London Handel Festival review - compelling elements, but a failed experiment

Rachel Halliburton

Conceptually the two cantatas just don't work together

La finta giardiniera, The Mozartists, Cadogan Hall review - blooms in the wild garden

Boyd Tonkin

Mozart's rambling early opera can still smell sweet

Der fliegende Holländer, Irish National Opera review - sailing to nowhere

David Nice

Plenty of strong singing and playing, but the staging is static or inept

Die Zauberflöte, Royal Academy of Music review - first-rate youth makes for a moving experience

David Nice

The production takes time to match Mozart's depths, but gets there halfway through

Mansfield Park, Guildhall School review - fun when frothy, chugging in romantic entanglements

David Nice

Jonathan Dove’s strip-cartoon Jane Austen works well as a showcase for students

Uprising, Glyndebourne review - didactic community opera superbly performed

David Nice

Jonathan Dove and April De Angelis go for the obvious, but this is still a rewarding project

Fledermaus, Irish National Opera review - sex, please, we're Viennese/American/Russian/Irish

David Nice

Vivacious company makes the party buzz, does what it can around it

The Capulets and the Montagues, English Touring Opera review - the wise guys are singing like canaries

Boyd Tonkin

There's a bel canto feast when Bellini joins the Mob

Mary, Queen of Scots, English National Opera review - heroic effort for an overcooked history lesson

David Nice

Heidi Stober delivers as beleaguered regent, but Thea Musgrave's opera is limiting

Festen, Royal Opera review - firing on every front

David Nice

No slack in Mark-Anthony Turnage's operatic treatment of the visceral first Dogme film

Phaedra + Minotaur, Royal Ballet and Opera, Linbury Theatre review - a double dose of Greek myth

Jenny Gilbert

Opera and dance companies share a theme in this terse but affecting double bill

The Marriage of Figaro, Welsh National Opera review - no concessions and no holds barred

Stephen Walsh

Compelling revival, punches, placards and all

The Marriage of Figaro, English National Opera review - long on laughs, short on kerb appeal

Alexandra Coghlan

Laugh-out-loud funny revival of an ingenious staging

The Flying Dutchman, Opera North review - a director’s take on Wagner

Robert Beale

Annabel Arden offers the Great Disruptor as archetype of the stateless and voiceless

Love Life, Opera North review - Lerner and Weill's blast into the past

Robert Beale

Time-travelling tale of love and despair - the first 'concept musical' revived

Jenůfa, Royal Opera review - electrifying details undermined by dead space

David Nice

Knife-edge conducting and singing, but non-realistic production is weaker in revival

Best of 2024: Opera

David Nice

Comedy takes gold over a year rich in standout performance

La rondine, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - sumptuous orchestral playing in an underrated score

Alexandra Coghlan

Puccini's 100th anniversary celebrated in style

L’étoile, RNCM, Manchester review - lavish and cheerful absurdity

Robert Beale

Teamwork to the fore in a multi-credit operatic comedy

The Pirates of Penzance, English National Opera review - fresh energy in clear-sighted G&S

David Nice

Tenor lead shines, and conductor finds new beauties in Sullivan's score

Rigoletto, Irish National Opera / Murrihy, Collins, NCH Dublin review - greatness everywhere

David Nice

Sheer perfection in Soraya Mafi’s Gilda and an Irish mezzo’s Berlioz

The Elixir of Love, English National Opera review - a tale of two halves

David Nice

Flat first act, livelier second, singers not always helped by conductor and director

Footnote: a brief history of opera in Britain

Britain has world-class opera companies in the Royal Opera, English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera and Opera North, not to mention the celebrated country-house festival at Glyndebourne and others elsewhere. The first English opera was an experiment in 1656, as Civil War raged between Cromwell and Charles II, and it was under the restored king that theatre and opera exploded in London. Henry Purcell composed the masterpiece Dido and Aeneas (for a girls' school) and over the next century Handel, Gluck, J C Bach and Haydn came to London to compose Italian-style classical operas.

Hogarth_Beggars_Opera_1731_cTateHowever, the imported style was challenged by the startling success of John Gay's low-life street opera The Beggar's Opera (1728), a score collating 69 folk ballads, which set off a wave of indigenous popular musical theatre (pictured, William Hogarth's The Beggar's Opera, 1731, © Tate). Gay built the first Covent Garden opera house (1732), where three of Handel's operas were premiered, and musical theatre and vaudeville flourished as an alternative to opera. Through the 19th century, London became a hub for visiting composers and grand opera stars, but from the meshing of "high" and "popular" creativity at Sadler's Wells (built in 1765) evolved in time a distinct English tradition of wit and social satire in the "Savoy" operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.

In the 20th century Benjamin Britten's dramatic operas such as Peter Grimes and Billy Budd reflected a different sort of ordinariness, his genius driving the formation of the English Opera Group at Aldeburgh. English opera, and opera in English, became central to the establishment, after the Second World War, of a national arts infrastructure, with subsidised resident companies at English National Opera and the Royal Opera. By the 1950s, due to pressure from international opera stars refusing to learn roles in English, Covent Garden joined the circuit of major international houses, staging opera in their original languages, with visiting stars such as Maria Callas, Tito Gobbi and the young Luciano Pavarotti matched by home-grown ones like Joan Sutherland and Geraint Evans.

Today British opera thrives with a reputation for fresh thinking in classics, from new productions of Mozart, Verdi and Wagner landmarks to new opera commissions and popular arena stagings of Carmen. The Arts Desk brings you the fastest overnight reviews and the quickest ticket booking links for last night's openings, as well as the most thoughtful close-up interviews with major creative figures and performers. Our critics include Igor Toronyi-Lalic, David Nice, Edward Seckerson, Alexandra Coghlan, Graham Rickson and Ismene Brown.

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