Tristan und Isolde at the Bavarian State Opera

Krzysztof Warlikowski’s Tristan, first seen two years ago, marking an end to Nikolaus Bachler’s intendancy, is on first sight at least, a puzzling affair. There are ideas, certainly, though quite…

A double bill of Purcell and Schoenberg in Munich

Purcell and Schoenberg: my kind of double bill.  Puritan ‘authenticity’, or whatever it is calling itself at the moment, is so all-pervasive when it comes to the seventeenth century that…

‘Mozart and the Munich Hofkapelle’: an enlightening evening

To the Munich Residenz’s Rococo Cuvilliés-Theater, once simply the Residenztheater, for a fascinating concert entitled ‘Mozart and the Munich Hofkapelle’. It was here, on 29 January 1781, that Idomeneo received…

Semele in Munich

I was sceptical, I admit, for the first two acts of Claus Guth’s new production of Semele, but it came together and offered an anthropological and psychoanalytical interpretation of Handel’s…

Così fan tutte in Munich

It is refreshing to find a Così fan tutte that takes the very greatest of Mozart and Da Ponte’s three masterpieces (for the most part) seriously. The amount of nonsense…

Così fan tutte at The Grange

To Hampshire and The Grange for the second of what should for me be three productions of Così fan tutte this summer. I cannot yet comment on Munich (Benedict Andrews/Vladimir…

Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence at the Royal Opera House

Kaija Saariaho’s latest opera, first seen at the 2021 Festival d’Aix en Provence, has now reached another of its co-commissioners, the Royal Opera House. It would be difficult to overstate…

Rusalka at the Royal Opera House

A strange evening: I very much enjoyed this new Rusalka, though found myself slightly haunted by the suspicion I did so more than I should have done. Musically magnificent yet…

Das Rheingold at English National Opera

Like the Biblical cosmos, that of the Ring offers more than one creation myth, perhaps not entirely consistent with one another. Therein lies the dramatic rub. Richard Jones’s new production…

Tannhäuser at the Royal Opera House

‘R. slept well and has decided to have a massage only once a day,’ writes Cosima Wagner in one of her last diary entries, from Venice, only twenty days before…