On Monday, Wolf Trap Opera opened their Salon Series with a concert by two of their young artists: soprano Magdalena Kuzma and baritone Jonathan Patton. With limited seating in a…
Year: 2026
Colourful, Entrancing World Premiere of Tavener’s Krishna at Grange Park Opera
Rather like the theological principle of the via negativa as a way of discoursing about the divine, it is perhaps easier to say what John Tavener’s last work, Krishna (completed…
Charity Begins at Grange Festival for Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito
With its accumulating drama and superbly sung set pieces, this account of Mozart’s 1791 operatic farewell gave every reason why it should be heard more often, whether in fully staged…
Soprano Sondra Radvonovsky at the Princeton Festival
The Princeton Festival has recently emerged as a satisfying summer destination for opera lovers in the broader New York area. It presents one major opera annually and also a concert…
Elektra in San Francisco
Richard Strauss’ 1909, second break-out opera Elektra just now was set in the same Greek antiquities museum as it had in 2017. But that’s not the big news. The first…
Impressive Singing Relieves an Austere Don Carlo from Grange Park Opera
First presented in 2016 and now revived twice at Grange Park’s West Horsley address, this Don Carlo retains all of Verdi’s dark solemnities, and with Jo Davies’ removal of the original Fontainebleau scenes,…
Il barbiere in San Francisco
It was not a ho-hum affair after all, though I had fears that it might be, given the ubiquity of Rossini’s most famous title, to the exclusion of most of…
Opéra Bastille’s La Traviata Leap Frogs into the Digital Age
With its cinematic scene changes and explosion of colour, this latest revival of Simon Stone’s Traviata reminded me of Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film version of Romeo and Juliet. If that was intended to…
Magnificent Singing and Intermittent Humour from Palais Garnier’s La Cenerentola
According to the publicity for this latest revival of La Cenerentola at Palais Garnier, first unveiled in 2017, Guillaume Gallienne sets the work in Naples and situates the characters “on the edge…
Così fan tutte at Opera Holland Park
Così fan tutte may be my favourite opera; it is certainly one of those about which I am touchiest. To have me come away from a performance not verging upon spitting…