sun 06/07/2025

Opera Reviews

Rigoletto, Welsh National Opera review - back to what they do best

stephen Walsh

We were of course lucky to get this new WNO Rigoletto at all. If it weren’t for the fact that, in the end, the company’s wonderful chorus and orchestra couldn’t wait to get back to doing what they do best, and accepted a modest glow of light at the end of the tunnel that would barely have registered on the light meters of most union negotiations, the company could well have been dark for many months, perhaps for good.

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Prom 68, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Garsington Opera review - eerie beauty sometimes faintly glittering

David Nice

Some operas shine in the vasts of the Albert Hall, others seem to creep back into their beautiful shells. Glyndebourne’s Carmen blazed, though Bizet never intended his opera for a big theatre, while Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, despite an equally fine cast from what’s now an equally fine company, Garsington Opera, left us with some black holes in the iridescent spider-web.

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La traviata, Royal Opera review - a charismatic soprano in a serviceable revival

alexandra Coghlan

Later this autumn Richard Eyre’s La Traviata celebrates its 30th birthday. Not bad going for the director’s first ever foray into opera – a genre he admitted holding an “unreasonable prejudice against”.

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Prom 52, Carmen, Glyndebourne Festival review - fine-tuning a masterpiece

David Nice

If you ever doubted that Bizet’s Carmen, 150 years young next year, is one of the greatest operas of all time, this performance would have changed your mind. Among the four principals only Rihab Chaieb’s utterly convincing, consistent protagonist was the same as on first night 22 performances ago, and as ringleader we had the vivacious conductor of the second run, Anja Bihlmaier.

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Verdi's Requiem / Capriccio, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - words, music, judgement

Simon Thompson

The Philharmonia’s residency was the centrepiece of the Edinburgh International Festival’s final weekend, and it’s right that the orchestra should be the focus because they were consistently the finest thing about both their Verdi Requiem and their concert performance of Richard Strauss’ last opera Capriccio.

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The Fabulist, Charing Cross Theatre review - fine singing cannot rescue an incoherent production

Gary Naylor

On opening night, there’s always a little tension in the air. Tech rehearsals and previews can only go so far – this is the moment when an audience, some wielding pens like scalpels, sit in judgement. Having attended thousands on the critics’ side of the fourth wall, I can tell you that there’s plenty of crackling expectation and a touch of fear in the stalls, too. None more so than when the show is billed as a new musical.

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Le nozze di Figaro, Komische Oper Berlin, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - great singing wasted

Simon Thompson

I’m all in favour of the EIF taking artistic risks, and of them bringing a high-prestige international production to Edinburgh. This Marriage of Figaro from Berlin’s Komische Oper is both of those things, because it is the first production by Kirill Serebrennikov – the high profile Russian director, placed under house arrest by the Putin regime, now based in Berlin – to be seen in the UK.

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Oedipus Rex, Scottish Opera, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - beautifully uncomplex

Miranda Heggie

Immersive opera such as this can be tricky to pull off, but the magic of Roxana Haines’s new production of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex lies in its simplicity, letting the material organically weave around the audience without overcomplications or deliberately clever trickery.

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Prom 24, The Fairy Queen, Les Arts Florissants/Le Jardin des Voix, Agnew review - hip-hop hornpipes

Boyd Tonkin

“One charming night gives more delight than a hundred lucky days”. So claims one of the gorgeous (and, in this case, risqué) numbers that stud Purcell’s “semi-opera” The Fairy Queen like sequins on a flamboyant party gown.

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Tristan und Isolde, Glyndebourne review - infinite love at white heat

David Nice

Richard Strauss described conducting Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde for the first time as "the most wonderful day of my life". It’s understandable that Glyndebourne’s music director Robin Ticciati should wish to improve upon “wonderful” in conducting a concert staging in 2021 with "miraculous" in charge of the full Nikolaus Lehnhoff production. I challenge anyone to cite another Tristan more alert to every possibility – the electrifying, the ferocious, the transcendental.

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