Although Idomeneo (1781) is Mozart’s first indisputable operatic masterpiece and was a work for which he retained considerable affection, it still receives surprisingly few performances, either on stage or in concert.…
Month: June 2026
Handel’s Serse at Barbican
Most recently seen in March in a stunning Tamerlano at Shoreditch Town Hall as part of the 2026 London Handel Festival, Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music now gave us…
Ravishing Gounod in Saint Louis
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis is currently presenting an uncommonly compelling staging of Gounod’s luminous musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, performed in English, a key part of the branding…
Animated Pirates Take Saint Louis by Storm
Gilbert and Sullivan’s evergreen enchantment, that is known as The Pirates of Penzance, rowdily seized the approval of the capacity audience at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and sustained an…
Wolf Trap Opera Artists Share Music on an Intimate Scale in Salon Series
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…
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 been in 2017. But that’s not the big news. The…
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,…