In 1937, while aggression from Mussolini’s Italy threatened to destroy the empire of Ethiopia, and Emperor Haile Selassie pleaded his country’s case with the League of Nations, Arthur Arent saw…
Emphatic singing characterises much of Garsington’s darkly imagined Queen of Spades
When Tchaikovsky’s card-game opera first appeared at London’s Drury Lane Theatre in 1915, it was announced by The Times as ‘a romance’. That’s marketing for you and pushing things a…
Harvey Milk Reimagined at San Francisco’s Opera Parallèle
Recalling a very dark moment in San Francisco’s history, Michael Korie and Stewart Wallace’s Harvey Milk Reimagined [for small operatic forces], arrived, via St. Louis, finally in San Francisco. This…
Porgy and Bess at Washington National Opera
Who can resist an English-language opera in the U.S. capital, especially one whose original production starred two D.C. natives, Todd Duncan and Anne Wiggins Brown? If this production of Porgy…
Chelsea Opera Group make a creditable addition to their repertoire of neglected operas in Bellini’s La straniera
Having presented Lalo’s Le roi d’Ys, based on a Breton legend, back in March, Chelsea Opera Group now gave another opera set in Britanny, Bellini’s La straniera (1829). It’s another…
The whimsical, the valedictory and the heroic: three sides of Richard Strauss
Sometimes comments are voiced to the effect that you’d never know Jane Austen had been writing in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars, since there isn’t a single reference anywhere…
A provocative musical and dramatic satire upon the legacy of Wagner opens Longborough’s 2025 season
The matter of Wagner’s antisemitism – or, more to the point, whether it permeates his work, and its influence upon subsequent German cultural and social history – is a debate likely to…
An impressive season-opener from Opera Holland Park’s Flying Dutchman
It seems entirely appropriate that Holland Park Opera’s first venture into Richard Wagner should be Der fliegende Holländer. And where better in London to experience its storm-tossed drama within an…
Madama Butterfly in Williamsburg
Minimalism in the Commonwealth of Virginia — an iconic opera in rarefied format achieved a powerful presence. Maestro Jorge Parodi’s orchestra of single winds, two horns, strings 3,2,1,2,1, piano, timpani…
Seamless, genial comedy for Glyndebourne’s The Barber of Seville
This revival of Annabel Arden’s production of The Barber of Seville for Glyndebourne happily falls within the same season in which its sequel The Marriage of Figaro will also be…