Eugene Onegin Royal Opera House, London ★★ Michael Church Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is the opera everyone loves. Ted Huffman’s new production comes heralded with this American director’s w...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
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
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
Don Carlo, Covent Garden, 12.5.17 With its God-given melodies, ravishing orchestration, and intricate but whizzing plot, Verdi’s Don Carlo ticks all the boxes, including that of topicality 150 years...Read More