Handel
Meet the unrivalled Sun King of early music, William Christie
Richard Bratby 23 November 2019 9:00 am
Richard Bratby is granted an audience with the feisty master of early music William Christie, who’s celebrating 40 years with Les Arts Florissants
Joyce DiDonato seduces you within the first 10 minutes: Royal Opera's Agrippina reviewed
Alexandra Coghlan 5 October 2019 9:00 am
‘Laws bow down before the desire to rule…’ Centuries before ‘proroguing’ had entered British breakfast-table vocabulary there was Handel’s Agrippina,…
The Holy Grail of concert-going: I Fagiolini deliver serious musicianship that never takes itself too seriously
Alexandra Coghlan 11 May 2019 9:00 am
We’ve all read the article. It does the rounds with the dispiriting regularity of an unwanted dish on a sushi…
Desperate mothers, abandoned babies: the tragic story of London’s foundlings
Fiona Sampson 4 May 2019 9:00 am
One of the oddest of Bloomsbury’s event venues must be the Foundling Museum. The handsome building on Coram’s Fields houses…
ENO's Jack the Ripper needs to decide if it wants to be a gore-fest or social history
Alexandra Coghlan 6 April 2019 9:00 am
Is it possible to write a feminist opera about Jack the Ripper? Composer Iain Bell thinks it is, and his…
In praise of the English Touring Opera — a minor miracle of the arts world
Alexandra Coghlan 27 October 2018 9:00 am
Wolverhampton; Workington; Blackburn; Sheffield; Lancaster; Hackney. Every year English Touring Opera does what our national opera company doesn’t: packs up…
Often baffling but ultimately entertaining: Britten’s Paul Bunyan reviewed
Alexandra Coghlan 15 September 2018 9:00 am
‘I feel I have learned lots about what not to write for the theatre…’ There’s a prevailing idea that the…
A fun evening that finished early enough for dinner – neither a given in Handel
Richard Bratby 23 June 2018 9:00 am
On a sward of AstroTurf somewhere off Silicon Roundabout, Mountain Media is hosting its summer party and, well, it’s the…
A delicious operatic ragout of horror: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk reviewed
Alexandra Coghlan 21 April 2018 9:00 am
There is famously no door into the late-night diner of Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’. Its three silent patrons are trapped behind…
ENO's La traviata was so comprehensive a flop that it is painful to go into detail
Michael Tanner 24 March 2018 9:00 am
Handel’s Rinaldo has not been highly regarded even by his most ardent admirers. I have never understood why — even…
Excellent but there’s too much larking about: ENO’s Rodelinda reviewed
Michael Tanner 4 November 2017 9:00 am
ENO has revived Richard Jones’s production of Handel’s Rodelinda. It was warmly greeted on its first outing in 2014, though…
One of the best shows we’ve seen in ages from the ETO: Giulio Cesare reviewed
Alexandra Coghlan 14 October 2017 9:00 am
Previously on Giulio Cesare… English Touring Opera’s new season caters cannily to the box-set generation by chopping Handel’s Egyptian power-and-politics…
Time to ditch authenticity for early music Proms
Alexandra Coghlan 12 August 2017 9:00 am
They say the first step towards recovery is admitting that you have a problem. So I’m staging an intervention and…
The righteous tone of recipients of state money has been noticeable lately
Charles Moore 10 June 2017 9:00 am
By the time you read this, the campaign will have drawn fractiously to its close, so here is a strong…
First-rate musical performance & production: Garsington’s Semele reviewed
Michael Tanner 10 June 2017 9:00 am
Handel’s Semele, one of the most enjoyable operas (or opera-oratorio, if you insist) in the repertoire, is, in its upshot,…
Insufferable rubbish: Glyndebourne’s Hipermestra reviewed
Michael Tanner 27 May 2017 9:00 am
Anyone who thinks they have experienced absolute boredom, or even doubts that such a state can exist, should go to…
Denial has rarely looked so good: ENO’s Partenope reviewed
Alexandra Coghlan 25 March 2017 9:00 am
Ceci n’est pas une Partenope. Forget the warring classical kingdoms of Naples and Cumae: this is surrealist Paris in the…
The thrills are in the visuals: Philip Glass’s Les Enfants Terribles reviewed
Alexandra Coghlan 4 February 2017 9:00 am
Kids: who’d have them? Certainly no one who has ever been to the opera. If they’re not murdering you, they’re…
Three ways not to do tragicomedy: English Touring Opera reviewed
Alexandra Coghlan 22 October 2016 9:00 am
‘Besides feeble writing, there is a mixture of tragic-comedy and buffoonery in it, which Apostolo Zeno and Metastasio had banished…
Life’s too short for ‘well-crafted’ pieces by musical mediocrities – and Handel
Damian Thompson 15 October 2016 9:00 am
There’s a folder in my computer’s external hard drive in which you’ll find 24 complete recordings of the Bach Cello…
Mutton, potatoes and ale – how children ate in the 19th century
Rose Prince 24 September 2016 9:00 am
Modern Britain scratches its head over children who are overfed, not underfed, while guilt-ridden mothers stand accused of feeding children…
Memo to directors: it’s not all about you: Beethoven’s Leonore reviewed
Richard Bratby 16 July 2016 9:00 am
Leonore is the first version of Beethoven’s Fidelio, and Stephen Medcalf thinks it’s better. ‘What Leonore gives us is more…
A Handel opera that isn't by Handel, and a Mozart opera composed in 1990, reviewed
Alexandra Coghlan 23 April 2016 9:00 am
Disguises and mistaken identities are a staple of opera, but usually as part of the onstage, not the offstage, action.…
Has there ever been a better time to be a lover of Baroque opera?
Alexandra Coghlan 28 November 2015 9:00 am
Time was when early music was a 6 p.m. concert, Baroque began with Bach and ended with Corelli’s Christmas Concerto,…
Startling and sublime - even the candles got a round of applause: Glyndebourne’s Saul reviewed
Anna Picard 1 August 2015 9:00 am
Caius Gabriel Cibber’s statues of ‘Melancholy’ and ‘Raving Madness’, their eyes staring blindly into the void, petrified in torment, once…
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