Riccardo Zandonai’s reputation rests almost entirely on his 1914 opera Francesca da Rimini, a work that retains a toehold on the repertoire. A somewhat overblown romantic tragedy based on a…
Category: Staged Operas
Otello in Los Angeles
The revival of an architecturally kitsch, early twenty-first century production from Parma, Italy could not dim the luster of this finely wrought Otello. The Italian tragedy shone with exceptional, unusual…
Don Giovanni: a new production by Mariame Clément opens Glyndebourne Festival Opera 2023
When Donna Anna’s father rescues her from the sexual predator who has abused her, in the opening moments of Mariame Clément’s new production of Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne, he shoves…
Royal Academy Opera: Rossini’s La cambiale di matrimonio
This bright, bold and brisk production of Rossini’s La cambiale di matrimonio (The Marriage Contract) at the Royal Academy of Music confirmed one thing: that the 18-year-old Rossini knew what…
A smart and sharp Agrippina from Hampstead Garden Opera
In 2017, the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington mounted a landmark, immersive exhibition, Opera: Passion, Power and Politics, which attempted to tell the ‘story of opera’ from its…
Arminio at the Royal Opera House
Arminio was the first new opera in Handel’s 1736-37 season at Covent Garden, performed for the first time on 12th January 1737. After six performances it was withdrawn and remained…
La Juive in Hannover: a medieval tale for the modern age
Three days before Lydia Steier’s 2019 production of Fromental Halévy’s La Juive received its first revival at the Staatsoper in Hannover, a British MP – a Minister for Immigration –…
A joyless Orfeo in Hannover
“On this happy and auspicious day which marks the end of the amorous sufferings of our demi-god, let us sing, shepherds, such sweet melodies, that worthy of Orpheus may be…
Victorian Villainy: Opera della Luna at Wilton’s Music Hall
Frankenstein’s ‘creature’, Count Dracula, Henry Jekyll-Edward Hyde: nineteenth-century fiction has furnished some notable literary monsters who continue to captivate the contemporary imagination. Sweeney Todd, barbarous barber and supplier of sickening…
Tosca in San Jose (CA)
There was Tosca at Berlin’s Volksbühne sung by actors (not singers), there was Tosca at the Aix Festival documenting the demise of an aged diva. But mostly Tosca is the…