Madama Butterfly Royal Opera House, London, ★★★★ Nobody could accuse Covent Garden of backwardness in virtue-signalling. They recently announced plans for trigger-warnings when murder, rape, a...Read More
La bohème Glyndebourne Festival Opera, ★★★★ It seems to matter more to Floris Visser that an audience should recognise his personal imprint, than whether he’s served a work as it d...Read More
Orfeo/Cosi fan tutte Garsington Opera, Wormsley The director and designer of Garsington’s new Orfeo – John Caird and Robert Jones – invite their audience to get involved in the ‘immersive arti...Read More
The Handmaid’s Tale Coliseum, London George Orwell’s 1984 did what no other novel had done before: it predicted the shape of the political world to come. The embodiment of its predictions may have...Read More
Peter Grimes Royal Opera House, London ★★★★★ Michael Church Allan Clayton, John Tomlinson, Bryn Terfel, Jacques Imbrailo, James Gilchrist, John Graham-Hall – and all under the musical dire...Read More
A new concert series (HP Futures); a new venue (St Martin-in-the-Fields has transformed both its subterranean regions and its artistic programme); and a potential new star in the making: what’s not ...Read More
Figure St John Passion St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield In medieval times, miracles were often ascribed to the healing power of the priory at St Bartholomew the Great, London’s oldest parish chu...Read More
Yellow Star – Red Star By Agnes Kaposi with László Csősz i2i Publishing £16.95 300pp Agnes Kaposi begins her autobiography with a disarmingly simple statement. ‘I should have had a good start ...Read More
I have just watched John Barber’s youth opera The Selfish Giant at Garsington. And I can’t remember when I last heard a new opera – for any age-group – which gave me such unalloyed pleasur...Read More
I Solomon, Great Hall, Bart’s Hospital Quatuor pour la fin du temps, St Paul’s Cathedral New Dark Age, Royal Opera House, London With the whole world of classical music engaged in streaming, l...Read More