Hurn Court Opera has come a long way since its creation by founder Lynton Atkinson in 2017. Established to showcase the talents of emerging singers on the threshold of their…
Category: Staged Operas
A Musically Superb Flying Dutchman from Welsh National Opera
A woman in labour, a birth and a death launch this new production of Wagner’s first mature opera about the legendary Dutchman condemned to sail the seas until a wife…
Unanswered Questions: Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia for Hampstead Garden Opera
What price constancy in a society where fidelity is not much prized? Like its immediate predecessor, Peter Grimes, Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia has corruption at its core and a…
Rinaldo Sallies Forth at the Royal Academy of Music
Some of the most life-affirming opera in London can be enjoyed in the regular productions at the city’s conservatories. First and foremost, they provide a showcase and valuable experience for…
It Doesn’t Always Have to be Cav and Pag: A Bartók and Zemlinsky Double Bill Plus a Song Cycle in Hamburg
How long does an opera need to be? How long is a piece of string? On being asked for his favourite opera Sir Thomas Beecham instantly replied, La Bohème. Why…
Gangsta Salome: Richard Strauss in Bethnal Green
Perhaps fittingly, there is an establishment by the name of “Satan’s Whiskers” a mere one-minute walk from York Hall. Richard Strauss’s Salome is a visceral juxtaposition of the good (or…
The Last Laugh of a Liberated Woman: La traviata at the New National Theatre Tokyo
The fact that La traviata has been historically known in Japan as Tsubaki-hime (The Camellia Princess), involves a misleading conception. The suffix -hime suggests a delicate, well-born maiden rather than…
Kosky’s Royal Opera House Ring Continues with Incisive Simplicity in Siegfried
Having set up his themes in the previous instalments of the Ring in the Royal Opera’s past two seasons, Barrie Kosky relaxes a little in Siegfried, the cycle’s third part,…
Handel in Shoreditch: a Tamerlano Triumph
Those who attended Irish National Opera’s Bajazet at the Linbury Theatre will be familiar with the story here. Handel accorded titular status to Tamerlano; different librettos, though: Handel’s principally uses…
IN Series Concludes PASSION PLAYS Festival With For Women Serving Time
Their third production in as many weeks, IN Series’ For Women Serving Time is an excellent meditation on women in prison. It belongs in this group of Passion plays because…