Richard Bratby

Florid flummery: ETO’s Il viaggio a Reims reviewed

You'll be more moved, gripped and entertained by ETO's Giulio Cesare. Plus: in praise of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

The cast did their best to make something out of the general nonsense: ETO's Il viaggio a Reims. Photo: Richard Hubert Smith 
issue 20 May 2023

Lightning sometimes strikes twice. English Touring Opera hit topical gold last spring when, wholly by coincidence, they found themselves touring with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian anti-war satire The Golden Cockerel. Now the company’s general director Robin Norton-Hale insists that their current tour of Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims – written in 1825 to celebrate the coronation of King Charles X of France – was fixed long before this month’s events at Westminster Abbey were even a glint in the Earl Marshal’s eye.

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