Opera
MARS, Irish National Opera review - silly space oddity with fun stretchesSunday, 10 August 2025
The craft heads to Mars, the music remains below on earth. Which is partly intentional: composer Jennifer Walshe tells us she listened to “synth heavy music” uploaded by astronauts (“a lot of Mike Oldfield and Vangelis”), so we veer from pop to... Read more... |
Káťa Kabanová, Glyndebourne review - emotional concentration in a salle modulableTuesday, 05 August 2025
Even more perhaps than straight theatre, opera seems to draw attention to the meaning behind what may on the face of it appear a simple story. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the story, with all its realistic impedimenta, can be simply ignored or... Read more... |
Buxton International Festival 2025 review - a lavish offering of smaller-scale workSaturday, 26 July 2025
The Buxton International Festival this year was lavish in its smaller-scale productions in addition to Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet, the heavyweight offer of the opera programme. And outstanding among them was the combination of Bernstein’s Trouble in... Read more... |
Tosca, Clonter Opera review - beauty and integrity in miniatureWednesday, 23 July 2025
At first sight, it seemed that Clonter Opera’s decision to tackle Tosca this year might be a leap too far. Its once-a-year complete production, dedicated to nurturing emerging talent in the security of the Cheshire countryside, must always be an... Read more... |
Hamlet, Buxton International Festival review - how to re-imagine re-imagined ShakespeareThursday, 17 July 2025
Ambroise Thomas’s version of Hamlet is the flagship production of this year’s Buxton International Festival and was always going to be a considerable challenge. How to re-imagine what is admittedly a very 19th century, very French Romantic re-... Read more... |
Falstaff, Glyndebourne review - knockabout and nostalgia in postwar WindsorTuesday, 15 July 2025
From the animatronic cat on the bar of the Garter Inn to the rowers’ crew who haul their craft across the stage and the military ranks of “Dig for Victory” cabbages arrayed in Ford’s garden, all the period flourishes that helped make Richard Jones’s... Read more... |
Salome, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - a partnership in a millionMonday, 14 July 2025
A Salome without the head of John the Baptist is nothing new: several directors have perversely decided they could do without in recent productions. In concert, the illusion needs the charismatic force of a great soprano and conductor. We got that... Read more... |
Semele, Royal Opera review - unholy smokeTuesday, 01 July 2025
Poor, slightly silly Semele fries at the sight of lover Jupiter casting off his mortal form, but in Congreve’s and Handel’s supposedly happy ending, everyone else rejoices that Bacchus is the offspring of this dalliance. Or do they? Not in the new... Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Glyndebourne review - perceptive humanity in period settingTuesday, 01 July 2025
Over 100 years ago, John Christie envisaged Wagner’s Parsifal with limited forces in the Organ Room at Glyndebourne. He would have been amazed to see it arrive on the main stage this year. But émigrés Carl Ebert and Fritz Busch persuaded him that... Read more... |
Fidelio, Garsington Opera review - a battle of sunshine and shadowsMonday, 30 June 2025
Sometimes, as the first act of Beethoven’s Fidelio closes, the chorus of prisoners discreetly fade away backstage as their brief taste of liberty ends. At Garsington Opera, in Jamie Manton’s revival of a production by John Cox, they slowly descended... Read more... |
Dangerous Matter, RNCM, Manchester review - opera meets science in an 18th century taleWednesday, 25 June 2025
Opera can take many forms and fulfil many purposes: this chamber opera by Zakiya Leeming and Sam Redway is about vaccination. Based on history, it has a story to tell and lessons to teach.“A new opera on medicine, memory and innovation” was the... Read more... |
Mazeppa, Grange Park Opera review - a gripping reassessmentMonday, 16 June 2025
Tchaikovsky has precisely two operas in the standard repertoire (including The Queen of Spades, currently playing at Garsington), and readers who love those works might well be forgiven for wondering what happened to the other eight or nine. On the... Read more... |
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