Author: Gary Hoffman

Based on a play, Chrysomania (The Passion for Money), by
the Russian playwright Prince Alexander Shokhovskoy, Pushkin’s short story The Queen of Spades is, in the words of one literary critic, ‘a sardonic commentary on the human condition’.

Time was when many felt compelled to ‘make allowances’ for ‘smaller’ companies. Now, more often than not, the contrary seems to be the case, instead apologising for their elder and/or larger siblings: ‘But of course, it is far more difficult for House X, given the conservatism of its moneyed audience,’ as if House X might not actually attract a different, more intellectually curious audience by programming more interesting works.

Having performed two contemporary operas (including commissioning Will Todd’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) as part of their family friendly strand, Opera Holland Park ventured into contemporary opera on their main stage last night (6 June 2015) when, rather amazingly, they gave the first professional London performance of Jonathan Dove and April de Angelis’s 1998 opera Flight.

2012 was a good year for Swiss tenor Mauro Peter. He participated at the Young Singers Project of the Salzburg Festival under the baton of Ivor Bolton, and won 1^st Prize and the Audience Prize at the Peter Schumann Competition in Zwickau.

With 27 named roles and a large orchestra (including instruments such as mandolins), Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s 1911 opera, I gioielli della Madonna (The Jewels of the Madonna) might seem a surprising choice for a relatively small opera house like the Slovak National Theatre / SlovenskÈ n·rodnÈ divadlo (SND) in Bratislava, Slovakia.