An RAM double bill: Ravel’s L’Heure espagnole and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi

How wonderful at last to return to opera at the Royal Academy of Music. (I caught an excellent concert of chamber music by Bartók and Eötvös from musicians coached by…

Le nozze di Figaro: Hampstead Garden Opera

HGO (formerly Hampstead Garden Opera) has been one of the musical heroes of the pandemic. Last year, it brought opera back to London with Holst’s Savītri; this year, it was…

Musick’s Monument: Lucy Crowe and Fretwork at Wigmore Hall

Thomas Mace’s Musick’s Monument, or, A remembrance of the best practical musick, both divine and civil, that has ever been known to have been in the world divided into three…

The Cunning Little Vixen at Opera Holland Park

Our present condition lends us, perhaps more than ever, to think of what has led us here, how things really are now, and where the world will take us next.…

An excellent Figaro at Opera Holland Park

What a welcome return to Holland Park this proved to be. Glorious weather helped, of course—quite a change from an earlier visit to Glyndebourne with altogether necessary overcoat and umbrella—but…

A new La clemenza di Tito from Richard Jones at the ROH

Over fifteen months since I had last set foot in an opera house—for Carmen at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden—it felt extraordinary to be back. All else would be secondary.…