When he published his novel Bruges-la-Morte, in French, in 1892, the symbolist author George Rodenbach included within the narrative dozens of black-and-white topographical photographs of the Belgian city, largely images…
Category: Staged Operas
A lovely, lucid Figaro at the Royal Academy of Music
La folle journée is the title of the second play in Pierre Beaumarchais’s ‘Figaro trilogy’ and, duly, the single ‘mad day’ on which the wedding of Figaro and Susanna takes…
Akhnaten still compels at English National Opera
Those lavish costumes, the fiery sun and the troupe of jugglers continue to leave a vivid impression in Phelim McDermott’s sumptuous staging of Akhnaten. Now in its second revival since…
Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma
In his final years, celebrated film and opera director Franco Zeffirelli came to be closely associated with the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, which shared his traditionalist view of opera staging.…
A ‘fantastic’ Respighi-Ravel double bill at the Royal College of Music
If you thought that fairy tales were for children, then this fantastic – in all senses of the word – double bill at the Royal College of Music would teach…
A superb Yonghoon Lee heads a magnificent cast at Covent Garden in Antonio Pappano’s first Turandot
Is Turandot the last great Italian opera of the twentieth century? It’s a common and widely written viewpoint – indeed, William Ashbrook and Harold Powers called it ‘the end of…
WNO’s radical Magic Flute misfires
Out with the old and in with the new is the modus operandi for aspiring operatic directors. In this new production of The Magic Flute Daisy Evans takes her prerogative…
Lohengrin at the Met
Québécois director François Girard probably seemed an obvious choice to design the Met’s new Lohengrin. His recent opera stagings are as celebrated as his music-obsessed movies, including the classic Thirty-two…
Bewitching Hänsel & Gretel from Mid Wales Opera
Whenever Hänsel and Gretel comes around, it’s always an opportunity for a director to bring a fresh perspective on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Humperdinck’s 1893 stage work, hailed by Richard…
English Touring Opera’s spring tour sets out on an Italian sojourn
With the familial knots of the guest list for Charles III’s coronation still to be unravelled and the UK still stretching itself on the Brexit-rack, Il viaggio a Reims, Rossini’s…