Monteverdi’s Poppea: a new production from ETO’s General Director, Robin Norton-Hale

English Touring Opera’s Autumn 2023 season opened at the Hackney Empire on Saturday 30 September 2023. This was the first season under new General Director, Robin Norton-Hale, and the opening…

Massenet’s Le roi de Lahore at Dorset Opera

Despite the revival of interest in Massenet’s operas, Le roi de Lahore does not seem to have been staged in the UK since 1879. It is that still relatively unfashionable…

Itch: a new opera by Jonathan Dove at Opera Holland Park

Simon Mayo’s book Itch was written, originally, for his science-loving son; two more books and a TV series later, Itch is now an opera by Jonathan Dove with a libretto by Alasdair Middleton based…

An enlarged, multi-layered Carmen by Oper im Steinbruch intrigues and frustrates

Oper im Steinbruch (Opera in the Quarry) presents an annual spectacular outdoor opera production in the historic St. Margarethen quarry near Eisenstadt in Austria. In 2019, the opera was Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and after a…

Hansel & Gretel: Opera Holland Park Young Artists

One of the reasons why Humperdinck’s Hansel & Gretel remains such a popular staple in the opera house is that it combines a potent story with great tunes. Written before Freud, yet…

Style, imagination & not a little daring: a new staging of Handel’s Saul at Berlin’s Komische Oper

Over the Whitsun weekend, the Komische Oper in Berlin had something of a Handel festival on with revivals of Barrie Kosky’s production of Handel’s Semele and Stefan Herheim’s production of…

Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini at Deutsche Oper

Riccardo Zandonai’s reputation rests almost entirely on his 1914 opera Francesca da Rimini, a work that retains a toehold on the repertoire.  A somewhat overblown romantic tragedy based on a…

Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park at the Royal Northern College of Music

Jonathan Dove’s orchestral adaptation of his 2011 opera Mansfield Park (originally written for soloists and piano duet) debuted at The Grange Festival in 2017.  With its cast of youthful characters, and…

Tchaikovsky’s first surviving opera, Oprichnik, gets a vibrant performance from Chelsea Opera Group

Tchaikovsky was fascinated by opera; he started writing around 20 of which nine survive as complete works. We know so very few of them well. His first opera to survive…

English Touring Opera: Giulio Cesare at the Hackney Empire

English Touring Opera opened its Spring 2023 season with a revival of James Conway’s fine 2017 production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare. The production was revived in 2020, but that run…