What a welcome return to Holland Park this proved to be. Glorious weather helped, of course—quite a change from an earlier visit to Glyndebourne with altogether necessary overcoat and umbrella—but…
Category: Staged Operas
Kát’a Kabanová at Glyndebourne: a caged bird sings
“I’d go out into the garden early in the morning, just as the sun was rising, I’d fall to my knees and pray and weep, and I wouldn’t know what…
A new La clemenza di Tito from Richard Jones at the ROH
Over fifteen months since I had last set foot in an opera house—for Carmen at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden—it felt extraordinary to be back. All else would be secondary.…
The Barber of Seville by San Francisco Opera
San Francisco has fielded, masterfully, a giganticized miniaturized version of Gioachino Rossini’s iconic masterwork Il barbiere di Siviglia in a parking lot for hundreds of socially distanced cars. It is…
POP’s Tahiti Goes Live and In Person
To note its tenth anniversary season, the enterprising Pacific Opera Project has quite winningly kicked off the celebration by revisiting the first opera it ever produced, Leonard Bernstein’s one act…
A charming L’heure espagnole from Grange Park Opera
Grange Park Opera’s latest online production is a horophile’s fantasy fulfilled. For one hour, Toledo is transported to Kensington Church Street where, amid the grandfather, cuckoo, mantel, hook-and-spike and lantern…
Pagliacci: The Grange Festival
If theatre in general, and verismo opera in particular, is based on the tension between pretence and reality, art and life, this performance of Pagliacci at The Grange in leafy…
Separation and Reconciliation: Opera Scenes presented by the Royal College of Music Opera Studio
‘Separation and reconciliation’: a fitting way to sum up the experience of many of us during the past months. And, also, the theme which united the Opera Scenes – drawn…
Rusalka at the Teatro Real in Madrid
For all the popularity of what might be termed its hit number, Dvořák’s opera Rusalka has a somewhat odd history in the UK. It had to wait until 1959 before…
La Bohème at a Drive-in Movie Theater
Well, maybe it wasn’t an opera house, but it was somewhere to go for opera beyond your living room. It was festive indeed to join a few hundred diehard aficionados…