A hard and heartless Rigoletto at the Royal Opera House

One of my opera-loving friends, a singer and musician herself and a regular devotee of both opera and ballet at the Royal Opera House and elsewhere, never attends performances of…

Cal McCrystal’s Iolanthe is revived at English National Opera

The curtain lifts to reveal a land of fairies: trailing vines, enormous flowers, rainbow-tinted lights.  As W.S. Gilbert writes later on, it all looks like something from ‘Andersen’s library’. This…

A Night at the Museum: English Touring Opera’s La Cenerentola

Who hasn’t had a childhood dream of being locked in the British Museum or Natural History Museum overnight?  What would happen if the exhibits came to life?  Films and fiction…

The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs in San Francisco (finally)

Is it man pitted against machines, or is it man sacrificed to machine? Or is it mankind sacrificed to machines. Sitting in the War Memorial Opera House for Mason Bates’…

Monteverdi’s Poppea: a new production from ETO’s General Director, Robin Norton-Hale

English Touring Opera’s Autumn 2023 season opened at the Hackney Empire on Saturday 30 September 2023. This was the first season under new General Director, Robin Norton-Hale, and the opening…

Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at the Royal Opera House

Now in its fifth revival, the popularity of Laurent Pelly’s L’elisir d’amore remains unchanged, his nicely observed 1950s rural Italy still pulling in the punters.  It’s not just the arresting…

George Benjamin’s Picture a day like this at the Linbury Theatre

In George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s Picture a Day like this,a Woman sets out on a quest to find a person who is genuinely happy.  Having experienced the death of…

David’s Alden’s Peter Grimes returns to the Coliseum

David Alden may have dragged George Crabbe’s eighteenth-century Suffolk Borough into the twentieth century, updating Britten’s Peter Grimes to the time of its composition and emphasising post-war parochialism and hypocrisy,…

Die Frau ohne Schatten at Neuköllner Oper

One often hears that Berlin has three opera houses.  In fact, it has many more. Among the most engaging is the Neuköllner Oper.  Situated in a funky Berlin neighborhood, it…

Il trovatore in San Francisco

Enrico Caruso said that Trovatore is easy — you just need the four greatest singers in the world. Let us not argue about who these singers may be. Do let…