After the ‘shabby little shocker’ that was Oliver Mears’s production of Semele, seen at the Royal Opera House just two months ago, he now turns his attention to the opera that…
Category: Staged Operas
At the Intersection of Circus and Opera: Campra’s Le Carnaval de Venise at La Vache Baroque
First performed on January 20, 1699, André Campra’s comic opera/ballet to a libretto by Jean-François Regnard finally arrives at its UK premiere in late Summer 2025 at the Vache Baroque…
Ensemble OrQuesta’s Don Giovanni: Grimeborn Festival’s late-summer Mozart at Arcola Theatre
There’s a deconstructed vibe to Arcola Theatre’s Studio 1 – raw brick, concrete, wood and metal predominate – and, in answer to this, Marcio da Silva’s production of Don Giovanni…
Norma at Gstaad
Bellini’s Norma is one of the great operas; it is far more than just ‘Casta Diva’. And those UK readers who attended Chelsea Opera Group’s presentation of the same composer’s…
Zelmira, La cambiale di matrimonio, L’italiana in Algeri in Pesaro
The last of the Neapolitan tragic masterpieces, the very first farce, and the first of the famous comedies. The 2025 Rossini Opera Festival was of limited success. The success limited…
Wolf Trap Opera’s Carmen: Getting The Best Of Fate?
It felt appropriate walking up to Wolf Trap’s Filene Center on a sweaty August night for this one-night-only performance, considering that Bizet’s Carmen takes place in southern Spain. It’s a…
Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade’s Scenes from Under Milk Wood – Presteigne Festival
Established in 1983, the Presteigne Festival is renowned for the diversity and quality of its programming and, like previous seasons, continues its immersion in contemporary music. Within the Welsh border…
Giulio Cesare in Salzburg
Stage director Dimitri Tcherniakov sets Handel’s most performed opera in an air raid shelter (where else these days?), wittily deploying a direct hit on the shelter to announce Cleopatra’s scorching…
One Morning Turns into an Eternity in Salzburg
A concoction imagined by American stage director Peter Sellars and Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. It is three orchestral masterpieces, fused, that host an abstract theater action — a body bag…
The Barber of Seville at Cape Town
There is no more remote place on earth than Cape Town to experience opera. At the juncture of two vast Oceans and over 8,000 km south of the nearest opera…