One of contemporary opera’s most brilliant and prolific composers, the inestimable Ricky Ian Gordon, has not only laid bare his soul, but also richly chronicled the peaks and valleys of…
Verdi’s Rigoletto at Lyric Opera of Chicago – Another View
The revival of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto now on stage at Lyric Opera of Chicago features several noteworthy debuts and a significant interpretation of the title character. The Duke of Mantua…
The Handmaid’s Tale in San Francisco
Feminist dystopian opera. The Royal Danish Opera’s 2022 production of The Handmaid’s Tale found fertile field in San Francisco! In short Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel made into an opera…
Mixed performances within an austere Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera House
Tchaikovsky’s tragic masterpiece can be presented with the minimum of means and on the smallest of scales, and this new production from American director Tedd Huffman, making his long-anticipated main…
Rigoletto at the Chicago Lyric
Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto tells the story of a small community in which one man’s absolute and arbitrary power eventually corrupts everyone around him. The tragedy is universal: if you find…
Un ballo in maschera in San Francisco
Where were the censors who once plagued Verdi’s Ballo just now when they should have saved us from an abysmal staging at San Francisco Opera! It was the 2016 production…
La Fenice’s Turandot emphasises the opera’s mythical element
The rich, vivid score, and dramatic – even sensational and violent – scenario of Puccini’s last opera (not quite complete at his death exactly one hundred years ago, in 1924)…
La Fenice’s double bill of short operas by father-in-law and son-in-law
By happy coincidence 2024 is an anniversary year for both Arnold Schoenberg (born 1874) and his son-in-law Luigi Nono (born 1924). Judging from the lack of works by either composer…
A comic take on Gazzaniga’s Alcina from Bampton Classical Opera
Bampton Classical Opera brought Giuseppe Gazzaniga’s L’Isole d’Alcina (Alcina’s Island) to London in Gilly French’s English translation in a production directed and designed by Jeremy Gray with Thomas Blunt conducting…
The 2024 Wigmore Hall / Bollinger Song Competition 2024 Final
The Wigmore Hall / Bollinger Song Competition has a distinguished list of previous winners, including Marcus Farnsworth, Julien van Mellaerts, Stephan Loges, Ian Tinsdale, James Baillieu, James Middleton and Christopher…