Category: Staged Operas

L’isola disabitata (The Uninhabited Island) is a comparatively late opera by Haydn, or rather an azione teatrale, which calls for only four soloists and an intimate setting. Indeed, it may…

Weber’s Der Freischütz is well-known – and variously admired or deplored – as one of the seminal works of German musical Romanticism. Despite its fame and influence, it isn’t now…

Premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1902 and closely based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s play, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande is renowned for its collision between “its severest realism and the…

Having missed the three previous operas in this Ring Cycle I wondered if I’d find myself at a disadvantage in Regents Opera’s Götterdämmerung: the answer is, I think, both yes…

There are some people who still believe in witches and the power of superstition. Jumping from an allusion to Shakespeare’s Macbeth in the above title to Hamlet’s declaration to Horatio…

Jonathan Dove’s opera Mansfield Park (with libretto adapted from Jane Austen’s novel by Alasdair Middleton) was first performed in 2011 and commissioned by Heritage Opera – a perfect work for…

You can take the same basic idea with all its dramatic potential, but don’t ever expect it always to turn out successful, even though you adhere to the same basic…