The Marriage of Figaro Coliseum, London With ENO fighting for their life, it’s vital that their output should be top quality, so last week I sampled two nights in a row. First up was a revival of Mi...Read More
The Marriage of Figaro Coliseum, London ★★ Michael Church With ENO fighting for their lives, it’s vital that their output should be top quality, so last week I sampled them two nights in a row. ...Read More
Orpheus and Eurydice, ENO The most unforgettable stage debut I ever saw was on the evening of 11 September 2001. I was at the Coliseum, New York’s Twin Towers had just collapsed, and Manhattan was b...Read More
The Merry Widow, ENO Nobody ever complains when Ko-Ko’s ‘little list’ in The Mikado is updated to suit the temper of the times, and nobody complains that April de Angelis’s book for ENO’s Me...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
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
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
The Marriage of Figaro, ENO Fiona Shaw’s production of The Marriage of Figaro didn’t fire on all cylinders when it premiered, and after its second revival there are still problems, some of ...Read More
La traviata, Coliseum, London As nights at the opera go, this was a strange one. By the end of Act One I was eager to leave, and I felt pretty much the same about Act Two, but Act Three, which must co...Read More