L’amore dei tre re at La Scala, Milan

Following its 1913 world premiere at the Teatro alla Scala, Italo Montemezzi’s L’amore dei tre re (The Love of Three Kings) immediately entered the standard repertory both in Italy and…

Salome at the Staatsoper Hamburg

The recent production of Richard Strauss’s Salome at the Staatsoper Hamburg, one of Germany’s major companies, has received rapturous reviews. Its main virtue is the assumption of the title role…

The Elixir of Love in San Francisco

That’s L’elisir d’amore, Donizetti’s bel canto gem, dolled up somewhere on the Italian riviera by the same team that set San Francisco Opera’s 2012 Lohengrin in a Soviet era, bookless…

Musically powerful Don Giovanni from Glyndebourne

First unveiled at Glyndebourne in May (review), Paul Higgins’s revival of Don Giovanni leaves Mariame Clément’s interpretation largely untouched, yet questions about her staging and its ambiguities remain unexplained.  Most…

Omar in San Francisco

The black man Omar Ibn Said was forcibly brought from sub-Saharan Africa to South Carolina in 1807. He was sold, becoming an indentured person for life (d. 1863). Omar the…

Handel’s Jephtha at the Royal Opera House

Voices cut through the darkness, chanting in prayer.  A candle flickers centre-stage.  These are potent symbols of the fundamentalism and fire that drive Handel’s Jephtha and of the battle between…

Annabel Arden’s L’elisir d’amore brings autumn sunshine to Glyndebourne

The first day of what would have been Glyndebourne’s 2023 Autumn Tour, had not Arts Council England swung its financial axe, was as sunny and bright as the score which…

Zoraida in Wexford: Forgotten But Not Gone

It was a big leap today from the effervescent afternoon performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s acclaimed comic delight, The Daughter of the Regiment, to the somber evening show of the same…

Afternoon Laughs in Wexford

If the Wexford Festival’s evening fare in their Women & War themed season is deadly serious, the afternoon offerings were chockful of amusing confections that are more fun than a…

Wexford Festival’s Stunning Two Women

When you enter the auditorium for the performance of Mark Tutino, Fabio Ceresa and Luca Rossi’s La ciociara (Two Women), the darkened stage is fronted on the far left apron…