Journalist, photographer and social commentator.
¨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Seen: June 27 June, Bratislava , Slovak National Theatre Is opera an outdated genre?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 […]
I am not surprised that so many musicians return to the Verbier Festival year after year. The top soloists probably don’t get paid as much as they normally would get for a concert, but the real carrot is that they […]
Seen July 21, 2017 in Holland Park, London Leoš Janáček’s obsession with a woman almost 40 years his junior can seem very unattractive on paper. But Kamila Stösslová didn’t seem to care much one way or another. And Janáček’s (unrequited?) […]
Jenůfa by Leoš Janáček, seen July 2017 Grange Park Opera, Theatre in the Woods at West Horsley Place. Janáček’s associated his opera Jenůfa with both the death of his young son Vladimir and the slow and tortuous illness that took […]
Il Turco in Italia, music: Gioachino Rossini libretto: Felice Romani, seen at Wormsley, Garsington Opera, 2 July 2017 It is the vitality of Il Turco in Italia’s overture, with its wonderful plaintive horn solo, that immediately sucks you into Rossini’s […]
Albert Herring, music: Benjamin Britten, libretto:Eric Crozier, seen at The Grange Festival , June 25 2017 Why did Benjamin Britten not write more comedy operas? On the evidence of this Grange Festival production he was clearly seriously good at being […]