tue 08/07/2025

Opera

First Person: soprano Soraya Mafi on why Glyndebourne's tour cancellation is disastrous

Anyone concerned about making the arts accessible regardless of where they live should be concerned by the recent announcement from Glyndebourne that it’s having to cease touring across England.That painful decision, and Welsh National Opera’s...

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Least Like the Other, Irish National Opera, Linbury Theatre review - the harrowing of Rosemary Kennedy

This multimedia horror revue gave me heart trouble, which is an odd kind of compliment. Not at first: the assault of abrasive music, the one singer having to leap all over the place vocally, competing with spoken word and information overload, can...

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A Child in Striped Pyjamas, The Cockpit review - a brave tackling of a Holocaust story

The obstacles that have faced Noah Max in the five years since he resolved to make an opera of John Boyne’s Holocaust novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas would have stymied someone less determined. Not just the usual fundraising and logistical...

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Katya Kabanova, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - living every bar of Janáček’s tragedy

Amanda Majeski pushed the boundaries as Janáček's tormented heroine for director Richard Jones at the Royal Opera. Here there were confines – no “concert staging” this, but a laissez-faire affair with scores and music stands, occasionally obscuring...

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Best of 2022: Opera

Looking through everything we’ve covered this year – and some of our reviewers have made their choices from an even wider sphere – I find, as in 2021, that the abundance of classical-concert top choices is richer than the number of truly outstanding...

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theartsdesk in Brno - a visionary at home in his ‘Moravian Bayreuth’

“Visionary,” I’m told, is a clichéd word these days. But so long as you don’t fling it about too freely, it’s apt: for me, there are only two visionary directors working in opera right now. One is our own Richard Jones – though even he can get it...

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Die Zauberflöte, Royal Opera review - classic show but disappointing conductor

“The great thing about this production,” Colin Davis observed in 2003, during rehearsals for its very first run, “is that the director [David McVicar] hasn’t attempted to shock anybody. He has tried to tell the story of The Magic Flute. And...

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Die Fledermaus, RNCM, Manchester review - a champagne cork-popping celebration

The Royal Northern College of Music is in the mood for celebration. Its 50 years of existence warrants popping the champagne corks big-time, so for its end-of-year operatic production Die Fledermaus is just what the doctor ordered.But this ain’t no...

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Don Pasquale, Irish National Opera review - stock comedy shines at close quarters

Only a group of top musicians stood, or mostly sat, between a full but necessarily small house and Dr Malatesta’s Plastic Surgery Clinic in the bijou surroundings of Dun Laoghaire’s 324-seater Pavilion Theatre. The scaled-down wing of Irish National...

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An open letter from Dame Sarah Connolly and colleagues to Arts Council England

The decision of Arts Council England to withdraw funding from the English National Opera and force it to move out of London is not only another hammer blow to the opera industry but it has huge ramifications for the extensive number of British...

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It’s a Wonderful Life, English National Opera review - Capra’s sharp-edged sentiment smothered in endless schmaltz

Looking for a sparkly operatic musical, well sung and played, slick and saturated in a range of mainstream styles that stop short in the year the movie masterpiece It’s a Wonderful Life was released, 1946? Then Jake Heggie’s 2016 confection may be...

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The Rake's Progress, Royal Academy of Music review - Hogarth's Rake enters the digital age

Paris, Vienna, Rome – all have their operatic homages. But London (and I mean real London, not the slightly-grey Italy of Donizetti’s Tudor Queens) only rarely makes it into the opera house. Curiously, on the rare occasions it does, it’s the seedy...

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