Alexandra Coghlan

Salieri’s revenge

Plus: too much injudicious filleting undermines Garsington Opera’s enterprising staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Mendelssohn’s complete incidental music

issue 25 July 2015

Magical transformations are a commonplace of opera. We see our heroes turned into animals, trees, statues; witness wild beasts turned suddenly gentle and even the dead brought back to life, with scarcely a raised eyebrow. But opera’s greatest metamorphosis — and one still less remarked upon — is the annual British phenomenon of country house opera.

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