Sparkling performances from Hurn Court Opera’s La Cenerentola

Bitter-sweet comedy of manners, happy-ever-after romance, or a serious moral tale, Rossini’s 1817 stage work is open to various interpretative slants, some even sinisterly dark. But, however you pigeon-hole this…

Searingly powerful Peter Grimes from Welsh National Opera

With vivid memories of WNO’s outstanding Death in Venice last season, expectations ran high for this new production of Benjamin Britten’s operatic masterpiece. We were not disappointed, and largely the…

Superlative Performances from Vache Baroque at Magdalen College, Oxford

As part of the Music in Oxford series, the award-winning music ensemble Vache Baroque produced an artfully conceived programme built around Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis letter of 1897, written during…

A Captivating new production of Pelléas et Mélisande at Opéra Bastille

Premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1902 and closely based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s play, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande is renowned for its collision between “its severest realism and the…

Charpentier from La Nuova Musica and Voktett Hannover at Wigmore Hall

Under the direction of Baroque specialist David Bates, La Nuova Musica joined forces with the German a capella ensemble Voktett Hannover to reveal two sides of French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier.…

Spotlight on Carissimi from Vox Luminis

Two death sentences; one fatal, one reprieved, and a near-fatal encounter with a whale. These events formed the central focus of dramatic performances by the Belgium ensemble Vox Luminis in…

Compelling performances from OperaUpClose:
Riders to the Sea & The Last Bit of the Moon

What does one perform with Vaughan Williams’s seldom heard one act tragedy about a mother who has lost her last surviving son somewhere off the west coast of Ireland? Drawn…

A powerful and unsettling Aida at the Royal Opera House

An empty stage enclosing grey walls of a concrete bunker. This is the initial impression we have of Robert Carsen’s Aida, presented at the Royal Opera House in a first revival by Gilles…

Georgian born and Italian-trained singer George Andguladze debuts at the Royal Opera House

David Truslove talks to the operatic bass George Andguladze who makes his Covent Garden debut as the King of Egypt in Verdi’s Aida. Conducted by Daniel Oren, this is the…

Gesualdo Six captivate a full house at St. Cross, Winchester

You can count on the fingers of one hand those a cappella vocal groups within the UK that come close to the finesse of The Gesualdo Six.  In terms of…