Opera
Two triumphant 'little greats' from Opera North
It has been a reasonably good week for peripatetic opera-loving female-underwear fetishists. In La bohème at Covent Garden Musetta slipped…
The unrepeated and unrepeatable brilliance of Maria Callas
Michael Tanner on why the impact of Callas is unrepeated and unrepeatable
A DIY affair in the main – but I cried at the end: Royal Opera’s new La bohème reviewed
The Royal Opera’s one production that, it has always confidently been claimed, need never be replaced has been replaced. John…
Was this forgotten operetta by the Waltz King the model for Der Rosenkavalier?
‘First performance: Vienna, October 3, 1880’ declares the programme for Opera della Luna’s new production of Johann Strauss’s The Queen’s…
The best Peter Grimes I’ve ever seen
‘Peter Grimes!’ Ranked high above us in the Usher Hall — a mob smelling blood, hot for the kill —…
Terrific production of a bona fide modern classic: Edinburgh Festival’s Greek reviewed
The Edinburgh International Festival began with a double helping of incest. Curiously, Greek — Mark-Anthony Turnage’s East End retelling of…
A fascinating rediscovery: Opera Holland Park’s Zaza reviewed
The strings sweep upwards, the horns surge, and Leoncavallo’s Zaza throws itself into your arms. We don’t know it yet,…
The amazing new Grange Park Opera has produced a largely successful Die Walküre
The new Grange Park Opera at Horsley is amazing, as everyone who visits it must agree. In less than a…
Social comedy at its most lovingly, evocatively drawn: Albert Herring at Buxton Festival reviewed
Someone at the Buxton International Festival had a wry smile on their face when programming this year’s trio of operas.…
A work as intrinsically uninteresting as this Mozart opera maybe needs trendy costumes
Mitridate, re di Ponto was Mozart’s fifth opera, written and first produced when he was 14 years old. Absolutely amazing.…
That this Fidelio is merely frustrating counts as something of a success
If you want to see an opera director kicking a genius when they’re down — and I mean really sticking…
One of the most exalting operatic experience I have had: Longborough’s Tristan reviewed
In an essay called ‘Wagner’s fluids’, Susan Sontag concludes, ‘The depth and grandeur of feeling of which Wagner is capable…
Shattering climaxes and showstopping singing: Glyndebourne’s Hamlet reviewed
Brett Dean’s new opera for Glyndebourne is a big-hearted romantic comedy, sunny and life-affirming. Only joking — this is contemporary…
First-rate musical performance & production: Garsington’s Semele reviewed
Handel’s Semele, one of the most enjoyable operas (or opera-oratorio, if you insist) in the repertoire, is, in its upshot,…
L’Orfeo is at its darkest and most painful outside the opera house: Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s concert staging reviewed
The ancient Greeks had a word for it —katabasis, descending into the depths, to the underworld itself, in search of…
Insufferable rubbish: Glyndebourne’s Hipermestra reviewed
Anyone who thinks they have experienced absolute boredom, or even doubts that such a state can exist, should go to…
Much of Scottish Opera’s Bohème is spot-on – but it begins with an act of petty vandalism
When a composer begins an opera, they create a world. You don’t need a full-scale overture: the tear-stained violins that…
Gilbert & Sullivan’s characters never exist below the waist: ETO’s Patience reviewed
English Touring Opera is playing safe this spring, with Tosca and Patience, and was rewarded, in Cambridge at least, with…
Puccini at his most enjoyably reprehensible: Opera North’s Turandot reviewed
Some opera-lovers prefer concert performances to full stagings. I don’t. It’s that whole Gesamtkunstwerk thing: opera needs to be seen…
The cast’s talents are not put to good use: Thomas Adès’s Exterminating Angel reviewed
The Adèsives were out in force at Covent Garden last Monday for the UK première of their hero’s third opera,…
A marvellous occasion – but could it not have been pruned? Il ritorno d’Ulisse reviewed
Monteverdi 450 — the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists’ tour of his three operas to 33 cities across two…
A ravishing Rameau premiere – pity the choreography was pure Bez
The English weren’t the first cowpat composers. Jean-Philippe Rameau raised the art of frolicking in the fields to such heights…
Sung with such eloquence it makes you wish we heard more operas in Hungarian
As we waited for curtain-up on Scottish Opera’s new production of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle a member of staff walked out…
Unbearable (in a good way): Opera Holland Park's La voix humaine reviewed
Opera is littered with the bodies of abandoned women. Step over Dido and Gilda, and you’ll still stumble into Donna…
Denial has rarely looked so good: ENO’s Partenope reviewed
Ceci n’est pas une Partenope. Forget the warring classical kingdoms of Naples and Cumae: this is surrealist Paris in the…
Culture House Daily
Books Podcast: Stalin’s war on Ukraine
Scotland’s artist-activists are the country’s truly sinister nationalists
Spectator competition winners: Big Ben’s bongs
Books Podcast: How not to be a boy
What our critics thought of the books on the Man Booker shortlist
