There were moments during the first night of Christof Loy’s production of Tosca at the Coliseum, which opened English National Opera’s 2022-23 season, when I thought that I might be…
Tag: English National Opera
Haute-couture opera with an industrial vibe: Costanzo, Handel and Glass at London’s Printworks
If one places in context where this program of Handel and Glass took place – the old and the contemporary – its historic setting seemed to have a real sense…
The Handmaid’s Tale at English National Opera
‘I don’t want to be a dancer, my feet in the air, my head a faceless oblong of white cloth. I don’t want to be a doll hung up on…
The Cunning Little Vixen at English National Opera
Failure to love the operas—more generally, the music—of Janáček would be a strange, soulless thing indeed. It seems more to be opera companies, strange, incomprehensible entities, than opera-goers, be they…
Nadine Benjamin triumphs in ENO’s La bohème
The fifth revival of Jonathan Miller’s well worn-in production of Bohéme has brought with it a number of revelations. On the first night (February 3), it was the conducting of…
La bohème returns to ENO
This was, I think, the fourth time I have seen Jonathan Miller’s production of La bohème. It strikes me, in this revival directed by Crispin Lord, to have a good…
ENO’s Valkyrie fails to catch fire: an under-ambitious start to Richard Jones’s Ring Cycle
Very little exists in a visual way of Wieland Wagner’s Bayreuth Die Walküre from the mid-to-late 1960s. What does, largely requires us to use our imagination. It is something which…
Vibrant visuals and fancy footwork: Cal McCrystal’s HMS Pinafore at English National Opera
The Modern Major-General may dismiss its whistled airs as “infernal nonsense”, but the songs of HMS Pinafore have lost none of their appeal during the near 150 years since Gilbert…
Philip Glass’s Satyagraha still captivates at English National Opera
After an eighteen-month absence, at least at the Coliseum, English National Opera is back on home turf and marking its return to live performance with a reboot of Philip Glass’s…
ENO pop up with Puccini at Crystal Palace Bowl
English National Opera seem to be making a summer habit of popping up with Puccini in London’s palace-parks. After 2020’s hill-top drive-in La bohème at Alexandra Palace, this year the…