Otello, Royal Opera House While English National Opera, under its current leadership, produces nothing but flops, the Royal Opera remains splendidly on track. Hot on the heels of David McVicar’s s...Read More
Die Zauberflöte, Royal Opera House, London While ENO produces one turkey after another, Covent Garden continues to fly the flag. It has just brought back David McVicar’s production of Die Zauberfl...Read More
Angela Hewitt, Wigmore hall Angela Hewitt’s stamina is impressive. Over the past four years her Bach Odyssey has taken her round the globe, playing every note of Bach’s vast keyboard oeuvre. Sheâ€...Read More
The Silver Lake/The Seraglio English Touring Opera Year after year, English Touring Opera’s resourceful director Ed Conway turns up trumps, and this year is no exception. Kurt Weill’s Expressionis...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
Akram Khan’s Giselle, Sadler’s Wells Giselle, which took Paris by storm in 1841 and did the same in another incarnation in St Petersburg fifty years later, has in more recent times gone th...Read More
The Intelligence Park, Linbury Theatre, London The new-music glitterati have gathered, and the claque are in full voice for Nigel Lowery’s new production of Gerald Barry’s The Intelligence Park in...Read More
Ragged Music Festival, Copperfield Road, East London Beating a path through the back streets of Tower Hamlets, I find myself at a stunningly good chamber concert. It begins with Tamsin Waley-Cohen an...Read More
Last Prom, Royal Albert Hall In the ancient past, four years ago, people going to the Last Prom had a fairly settled sense of how to deal with it. Left-wingers could laugh at the programme’s jingois...Read More
Latvia may occupy a large territory, but its population of 1.7 million would fit into a small corner of London, and its road to independence has been long and hard. It endured centuries of Swedish, Po...Read More