Richard Bratby

Sound and fury | 22 November 2018

Plus: the Royal Opera chorus aren't in the same league as the Welsh National Opera's, who were on top form in Prokofiev's War & Peace

issue 24 November 2018

The People are angry. In fact, they’re bloody furious. As the lights flash up on David Pountney’s production of Prokofiev’s War & Peace, the entire cast confronts the audience: grim, braced, defiant. And before you’ve had time to wonder if this sort of thing is just the long-term legacy of Les Misérables, or whether opera directors really are in love with totalitarian imagery, they unleash hell.

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