From the House of the Dead, Royal Opera House, 7.3.18 Dostoevsky’s novel From the House of the Dead was based on his searing experiences in a Siberian prison. Janacek’s opera faithfully fol...Read More
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ENO, 1.3.18 ENO had two fine house productions to choose between, for their revival of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They could have chosen Christopher A...Read More
Steven Isserlis/Alexander Melnikov, Wigmore Hall, 21.21.18 At first glance, Steven Isserlis and Alexander Melnikov might seem an odd couple – a mop-headed weirdo with a cello, and a priest-like pres...Read More
Dead Man Walking, Barbican, 20.2.18 First the back story. A nun named Sister Helen Prejean was asked to write to a convict on death row in Louisiana who was due to die for a double murder; she accompa...Read More
Fujikura Portrait, Wigmore Hall, 17.2.18 A protégé of Pierre Boulez and George Benjamin, the Japanese-born composer Dai Fujikura has long been a favourite with British avant-garde musicians, thanks ...Read More
Iolanthe, ENO, 13.2.18 Arthur Sullivan and WS Gilbert didn’t like each other, didn’t have much in common, and both had loftier ambitions than the creation of operettas. But if they’d stuc...Read More
Opera moves with the times: it’s no surprise that a Carmen in tune with the #metoo movement should open in Florence, with the exasperated heroine shooting her jealous lover dead. But that’s...Read More
The Return of Ulysses, Roundhouse, 9.1.18 Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria is an ecstatically melodious succession of recitatives, duets, and arias telling of war, exile, love, and reven...Read More
Genesis Suite, Barbican, 13.1.18 In 1943, as news of the Holocaust and the mass flight of refugees was coming through, a Jewish New York musician named Nat Shilkret had an idea for a musical re...Read More
Salome, Royal Opera House, 10.1.18 Richard Strauss based his Salome on Oscar Wilde’s play (written in French and banned in Britain) which turned on two taboo sexual obsessions: Herod’s for ...Read More