Journalist, photographer and social commentator.
Richard Strauss’ Elektra is a brutal opera. The title role requires a dramatic soprano to maintain total control across her entire range, from low A to high C. While navigating the rapidly descending and ascending vocal lines, she must […]
Is Duke Bluebeard’s Castle a tale of external or internal events? ¨Where is the stage: within, or outside you ?¨ asks the Bard in the prologue to Bluebeard’s Castle. Iván Fischer, the founder and conductor of the Budapest Festival Orchestra […]
¨Franco Zeffirelli spoke with the animals. He spoke with the geese and was convinced he’d trained them. Only later did he learn that they actually understood the music – and knew exactly when to make their entrance¨. So says Cecilia […]
To put on a production of Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas (1689 ) presents several challenges right from the outset. First, the musical sources are fragmentary. The earliest surviving scores date from 1775 or later and they lack enough […]
Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades – or Pique Dame – was the last opera Stalin attended. Though he had some appreciation for classical music – as depicted in The Death of Stalin – he was never particularly fond of opera. […]
Ukraine features almost on a daily basis on our digital front pages. In the Russo-Ukrainian war Western sympathy clearly lies with the underdog: Ukraine. Yet Tchaikovsky’s opera Mazeppa (1883), inspired by Pushkin’s poem Poltava, portrays the Ukrainian leader of the […]
¨How can you fail with Tosca? … If you fail with Tosca, then there is something incredibly wrong¨, Sir Bryn Terfel told me recently. The Welsh bass-baritone is currently performing at Royal Opera Covent Garden in Jonathan Kent’s revived staging […]
An intoxicated man dressed in a white suit, wearing a panama hat enters during the ouverture. He announces that ‘Love is like Death’. I’m not sure who he is quoting, but it’s not Nietzsche, who apparently saw the opera at […]
Seen: June 27 June, Bratislava , Slovak National Theatre Is opera an outdated genre? I urge you to see the Slovak National Theatre’s new production of Madama Butterfly and then argue that old operas have only limited relevance. The plot […]
Production seen June 23rd 2023 at The Grange, Northington, Hampshire From afar The Grange at Northington in Hampshire resembles a Grecian temple. But the gently rolling lawns, farmed fields, peaceful lake and trees that surround the impressive neoclassical building couldn’t […]
Händel Festspiele Halle 2018, 26 May, 2018 Georg-Friedrich Händel Halle Correct me if I am wrong, but surely the Kansas-born mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato is our generation’s biggest opera diva. On top of that a prima donna who doesn’t put on […]
The Handel festival has taken place on an annual basis in the composer’s birthplace Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, since 1952. This year’s premiere of the original Italian version of the opera Berenice means that all of Georg Friedrich Händel’s 42 operas have […]