thu 29/05/2025

Opera

Britten 100: An Aldeburgh Centenary Diary

The most intensive period of music-making I’ll ever experience, celebrating the 100th birthday of Benjamin Britten in and around his home town, ended on Sunday. I’m an Aldeburgh resident and I attended everything on offer. I thought the best way to...

Read more...

The Verdi-Boito Story, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

How do you mark the Verdi bicentenary? As music director of the Hallé Orchestra and a Verdi specialist, Sir Mark Elder gave it a lot of thought. He decided to tell a story rather than direct a concert performance of one opera – say, La traviata. The...

Read more...

Albert Herring, BBCSO, Bedford, Barbican

Three cheers for good old Albert, natural laugh-out-loud heir of Verdi’s Falstaff and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, and the best possible way to mark creator Britten’s being one hundred years and one day old. Youth has its day in both those earlier...

Read more...

Sonica, Glasgow

At first it looked like a joke. But, as each muscle spasm, set off by an electric shock, did appear to produce a pained expression in the performer and a subsequent note, one slowly had to accept that these four string quartet players were indeed...

Read more...

The Magic Flute, English National Opera

There’s a scene in Mozart’s most metaphysical opera which Ingmar Bergman, creator of what is still the richest of all Magic Flutes, describes as “at the outermost limit of life”. Hero Tamino seems to have reached a point of no return and no going...

Read more...

theartsdesk in Wexford: European opera feast

At the Wexford Opera Festival this autumn you could see a bicentenary performance of Verdi’s La traviata. Likewise Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. But that’s not why Ireland’s operatic showpiece is one of the most famous, admired and respected events...

Read more...

Don Giovanni, Opera Vera

For a brand-new opera group to set something as ambitious as Don Giovanni before an audience demands sackfuls of self-awareness and confidence. But the eight young singers of Opera Vera are no mere enthusiasts – they are rich in experience and can...

Read more...

Satyagraha Remix: Opera Reaches Out

The brightly coloured flyer promises all manner of activities. Improvised jam sessions, performance poetry, and philosophy discussions. Oh, and an Indian dance workshop. On an obscenely cold Sunday night I find myself braving not only the cold, but...

Read more...

Wozzeck, Royal Opera

You could hardly ask for a better cast than the one assembled for this short run of Wozzeck at the Royal Opera House: Simon Keenlyside in the title role, Karita Mattila, John Tomlinson, Mark Elder in the pit. And at a top price of £65, with many...

Read more...

Death in Venice, Opera North

From the strange, stuttering opening to its elegiac, drawn-out coda, this is an exquisite, lovingly realised staging of Britten's last opera. It's so good that it amplifies any doubts that you might have about this peculiar, distinctly unlovable...

Read more...

The Killing Flower, Linbury Studio Theatre

In this classical anniversary year we’ve had masses of Wagner and Verdi, plenty of Britten (and still more Britten) but not much has been heard of 2013’s other birthday-boy, the notorious Carlo Gesualdo – prince, priest, composer and murderer. Best...

Read more...

Greek, Music Theatre Wales, Linbury Studio Theatre

“Fancy my mum? I’d rather go down on Hitler.” When the verbal violence of Steven Berkoff meets Mark-Anthony Turnage’s musical iconoclasm, the result is unlike any Oedipus story you’ve ever heard. Well, except for the shagging his mum bit. That’s...

Read more...
Subscribe to Opera