by Alexandra Coghlan | Feb 15, 2026 | Drama, Music
John Findon as Peter Grimes in Opera North’s production, conducted by Garry Walker, Photo credit: James Glossop (c) 2026 Peter Grimes is an opera of place above all things. We don’t need to question what holds the loner-fisherman Grimes on the bleak Suffolk... by Alexandra Coghlan | Jul 7, 2025 | Drama, Music
How many professional companies in the UK could currently muster a staging of Peter Grimes? You could count them on one hand with fingers to spare. Enter British Youth Opera and director Will Kerley with a concert-production of serious power, a showcase of young... 
by Alexandra Coghlan | May 5, 2025 | Drama, Music, Uncategorized
Pimpinone and Serpetta, photo © Camilla Greenwell A maidservant on the make and her foolish-fond employer – you barely need to fill in the details. But in Pimpinone Telemann takes a classic operatic gambit and pours so much musical verve, invention and heart into the... 
by Alexandra Coghlan | Feb 7, 2020 | Music
Gerald Barry’s Alice opera is less an adaptation than an invasion. The Irish composer takes Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass and unleashes the full force of his madcap, surrealist imagination at them.... 
by Alexandra Coghlan | Dec 15, 2018 | Music
Now brush your teeth The Royal Opera’s brief to director Antony McDonald was simple: create a production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel that does for Christmas opera what The Nutcracker does for ballet. His answer is picture-postcard pretty – a nineteenth-century,...