La folle journée is the title of the second play in Pierre Beaumarchais’s ‘Figaro trilogy’ and, duly, the single ‘mad day’ on which the wedding of Figaro and Susanna takes…
Handel’s Scipione: the Early Opera Company close the London Handel Festival with a celebration of clemency
This year’s London Handel Festival was brought to a gracious close with a celebration of clemency, magnanimity and honour. Scipione, the ninth of the operas that Handel composed for the…
Myths and monsters from the BBCSO and Brabbins at the Barbican Hall
Beowulf is an archetypal heroic text of the medieval age: warriors and kings, the sea and craggy cliffs, monsters and myths: the bright gleam of the hero’s ceremonial armour juxtaposed…
Akhnaten still compels at English National Opera
Those lavish costumes, the fiery sun and the troupe of jugglers continue to leave a vivid impression in Phelim McDermott’s sumptuous staging of Akhnaten. Now in its second revival since…
Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma
In his final years, celebrated film and opera director Franco Zeffirelli came to be closely associated with the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, which shared his traditionalist view of opera staging.…
Mary Bevan on superb form in Signum’s Visions Illuminées
If you think soprano Mary Bevan is associated only with Baroque repertoire, think again. Yes, she’s recently wowed audiences in Handel’s Alcina at Covent Garden, and she’s about to embark…
Tchaikovsky’s first surviving opera, Oprichnik, gets a vibrant performance from Chelsea Opera Group
Tchaikovsky was fascinated by opera; he started writing around 20 of which nine survive as complete works. We know so very few of them well. His first opera to survive…
A ‘fantastic’ Respighi-Ravel double bill at the Royal College of Music
If you thought that fairy tales were for children, then this fantastic – in all senses of the word – double bill at the Royal College of Music would teach…
A superb Yonghoon Lee heads a magnificent cast at Covent Garden in Antonio Pappano’s first Turandot
Is Turandot the last great Italian opera of the twentieth century? It’s a common and widely written viewpoint – indeed, William Ashbrook and Harold Powers called it ‘the end of…
Florian Störtz announced as winner of International Handel Singing Competition
On Thursday 16th March 2023, baritone Florian Störtz was announced as the winner of the International Handel Singing Competition following the final presented by internationally acclaimed soprano Danielle de Niese, which took place at London’s St George’s Church, Hanover Square.…