In his Welcome to English Touring Opera’s 2022 Autumn Tour, James Conway reminds audiences that ‘[w]hen Handel was writing his operas in the 1720s and 30s, it was the only…
Category: Staged Operas
Christof Loy’s Tosca opens ENO’s 2022-23 season
There were moments during the first night of Christof Loy’s production of Tosca at the Coliseum, which opened English National Opera’s 2022-23 season, when I thought that I might be…
Eugene Onegin in San Francisco
Symphonic excess in a spiritless exposition of Tchaikovsky’s sacrifice of youthful love. Greek conductor Vassilis Christopoulos came to fame at the Athens Opera with an Elektra, and then gained even…
A wonderfully vivid evening: Blackheath Halls Opera in Bernstein’s Candide
Bernstein’s Candide has been through innumerable versions since the work’s disastrous premiere on Broadway in 1956, and in many ways, it remains a sequence of songs in search of a…
Antony and Cleopatra in San Francisco
A John Adams premiere is about the biggest news event the opera world can generate. Here’s the news from San Francisco. Antony and Cleopatra is the first opera John Adams…
Welsh National Opera’s The Makropulos Affair: a magnificent achievement
The question of why we should crave immortality is central to Janáček’s penultimate opera. As a composer he defied old bones and enjoyed an Indian summer, finding recognition during his…
Haute-couture opera with an industrial vibe: Costanzo, Handel and Glass at London’s Printworks
If one places in context where this program of Handel and Glass took place – the old and the contemporary – its historic setting seemed to have a real sense…
The Unravelling Fantasia of Miss H: a powerful operatic tribute to Mary Frances Heaton
She stood up one Sunday in St George’s church, the parish church of Doncaster, and interrupted the sermon, accusing the preacher of being “a whited sepulchre, a thief, a villain,…
The Trocs go to the opera? Vinci’s Alessandro nell’Indie with five countertenors at Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival
This was a brilliantly theatrical and superbly sung recreation of an opera reflecting the work’s premiere by an all-male cast. Max Emanuel Cencic’s Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival takes place in…
A Handelian capriccio from Bampton Classical Opera at the Barn at Old Walland
Georg Frideric Handel and Richard Strauss may make unlikely bedfellows, but for this inaugural performance at the Barn at Old Walland, in Wadhurst, Sussex, Bampton Classical Opera wittily presented Handel’s…