Opera
Tosca, Welsh National Opera review - a great company reduced to brillianceMonday, 15 September 2025
So it’s come to this: WNO’s autumn season reduced to two operas, a Tosca borrowed from Opera North and a revival of their own Candide from two years back; then two next spring. a revival of their Valleys saga Blaze of Glory (about mine closures and... Read more... |
BBC Proms: The Marriage of Figaro, Glyndebourne Festival review - merriment and menaceThursday, 28 August 2025
One door closes, and another one opens. A lot. It’s extraordinary what value those two simple additions to the Royal Albert Hall stage lent to Glyndebourne’s performance of The Marriage of Figaro at the Proms.Combined with some niftily manoeuvred... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Suor Angelica, LSO, Pappano review - earthly passion, heavenly griefWednesday, 20 August 2025
At first, I had my doubts about Puccini’s Suor Angelica in this concert performance at the Proms with Sir Antonio Pappano and his London Symphony Orchestra.With the big band (up to and including Richard Gowers’s organ) arrayed far behind the... Read more... |
Orpheus and Eurydice, Opera Queensland/SCO, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - dazzling, but distractingThursday, 14 August 2025
There’s a lot to shout about in this Orpheus, especially the way it looks. In a thin year for staged opera at the Edinburgh International Festival, they’ve gone for an eye-popper with this staging of Gluck’s most influential work. Premiering at... Read more... |
MARS, Irish National Opera review - silly space oddity with fun stretchesMonday, 11 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... |
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