Category: Performances

Opera has never been an art form to hold anything back. But even within the
genre itself, Salome is — literally — one tough, depraved act to
follow.

Although FranÁois Couperin won his reputation as an esteemed composer at the
ostentatious and vainglorious court of Versailles, under the patronage of Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’, his work is often surprisingly discreet and intimate.

The swift return to the Coliseum of Catherine Malfitano’s production of Tosca, premiered in 2010, contrasts strongly with the increasingly disposable nature of many recent ENO productions.

Handel’s oratorio Saul was the first dramatic oratorio that he wrote with a strong libretto.

Opera North holds a special place in my affections: my first full opera in the theatre was the company’s Wozzeck, which I saw as a schoolboy at the Lyceum Theatre in Sheffield.

Imagine a tuneful eighteenth-century “ballad opera” of country
life, say Stephen Storace’s enduringly popular No Song No
Supper, cross it with Cavalleria Rusticana, throw in a bit of
Rocky for good measure, and you have some idea of Ralph Vaughan
Williams’s first opera, Hugh the Drover, a “Romantic
Ballad Opera.”

Lyric Opera of Chicago staged Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di
Lammermoor as its second production of the current season with Susanna
Phillips taking on the role of the heroine torn between romantic love and familial pressures.