For many, the greatest English composer since Purcell and the greatest English composer of opera tout court, Harrison Birtwistle died little more than a fortnight before this concert. Even for…
The Firebird: new digital opera, co-produced with Little Angel Theatre, coming to ETO at Home
English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a new digital opera for children, The Firebird, in a co-production with Little Angel Theatre. It will premiere on ETO at Home on Wednesday 18th May, before being released to…
From the Hills of Dream: the forgotten songs of Arnold Bax
In a 1949 broadcast, Sir Arnold Bax (1883-1953) declared: ‘Yeats’ poetry means more to me than all the music of the centuries.’ And, when the Irish poet and dramatist died…
More virtuosic feats from Tenebrae at Wigmore Hall
Tenebrae is one of the UK’s national treasures and like a perfectly manicured county cricket pitch barely a blade of grass is out of place. Everything in this Wigmore Hall…
Damiano Michieletto’s Don Pasquale returns to the Royal Opera House
In one sense, Donizetti’s Don Pasquale hinges on a slap. In a fit of pique, Norina lashes out at the eponymous wealthy, stubborn old man whom she’s duped, when he…
Baroque pornography in Alexis Piron’s Vasta, Reine de Bordélie
One of the more enduring pleasures of having had a classical education – at least if you still remember it – is reading the richness of its literature: from Homer…
A third volume of British song from James Gilchrist and Nathan Williamson
With this third and final instalment of their survey of 100 years of British song James Gilchrist and Nathan Williamson bring us up to the present day. Their focus is…
Schwanengesang and other lieder: Ian Bostridge and Imogen Cooper at Leeds Lieder 2022
The thirteen songs, setting poems by Rellstab and Heine, that Schubert’s publisher Tobias Haslinger grouped together, supplemented with an additional setting of Johann Seidl and published as Schwanengesang in 1829,…
The Revolution Smells of Jasmine: Wallis Giunta, Sean Shibe and Adam Walker at Leeds Lieder
The Irish-Canadian mezzo-soprano, Wallis Giunta, described her late-night programme with guitarist Sean Shibe and flautist Adam Walker as ‘the sound track of revolution … an homage to protest music in…
A premiere recording of Handel’s pasticcio, Caio Fabbricio, by London Early Opera
1733 was not a good year for George Frideric Handel. His business affairs were in a shaky state, the collapse of the Royal Academy in 1728 having forced him, in…