The Queen of Spades, Royal Opera House, London When is a libretto not a libretto? When it falls into the hands of Stefan Herheim. For this Norwegian director, an opera is something out of which he ma...Read More
Hansel und Gretel, Royal Opera House The popularity of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel goes up and down like a yo-yo. After its premiere – conducted by Richard Strauss, who admired ...Read More
Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times By Alan Walker Faber £30.00 727 pp Farrar Strauss & Giroux $40.00 There have been many biographies of Chopin, and countless studies of his works, but this is the...Read More
Mitsuko Uchida, Royal Festival Hall ‘Schubert’s music is between life and death; he dreams, with his eyes on the far horizon.’ With these words emblazoned over her programme, this is...Read More
War Requiem, ENO Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem is all bells, children’s choirs, trumpet calls, choral shouts, solo voices leaping out like flames, and angular melodic lines over a ground-bass of ...Read More
Porgy and Bess, ENO Mired in trouble thanks to a series of avoidable but calamitous artistic misjudgements, English National Opera desperately needs a wise hand on the tiller. And if its three-way co-...Read More
Radamisto, Hackney Empire Coming fresh from a clunkily over-heated Ring at Covent Garden, and a deranged travesty of Salome at the Coliseum, it’s sweet relief to encounter English Touring Opera’s ...Read More
Salome, English National Opera ‘We begin in darkness,’ proclaims an essay by Elena Manafi in the programme, ‘a confrontation with the abyss of the feminine.’ Adena Jacobs’s new production of...Read More
Verbier can still spring surprises, even at the venerable age of twenty-five. Marking that anniversary with a gala concert this summer, they corralled more musical celebrities on stage than had ever b...Read More
Paul Bunyan, ENO at Wilton’s As the poet Stephen Spender lamented, Britain never got the great opera which should have resulted from that seemingly dream pairing, Benjamin Britten and WH Auden. The...Read More