by Fiona Hook | Feb 2, 2022 | Music, Uncategorized
I’m an opera critic. I’m not there to enjoy myself. So I always feel a little fraudulent when a trip to the opera presents an evening of pure pleasure. David McVicar’s 2006 staging of Figaro, the opera’s 1786 setting transposed to a country house in 1830, is... 
by Music Editor | Nov 27, 2021 | Music
By Robert Thicknesse How do you turn a Hammer horror into a tragedy? It confronts every director of Verdi’s take on Shakespeare. Part of it is that the mid-19th century had such different ideas of drama (and of Shakespeare) from us, another that Verdi (and his... 
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 Tom Sutcliffe | Oct 15, 2019 | Music
On the pull We are not meant to sympathise with Don Pasquale, the elderly rich gent who is the central character of Donizetti’s perfectly moulded comedy premiered in Paris in 1843 and an instant hit. In the Royal Opera rep it has now arrived very well cast (and staged... 
by Music Editor | Sep 24, 2019 | Music
Mommie dearest By Paul Levy Among my regrets is that I am old enough to have seen and heard Maria Callas perform at Covent Garden, but young enough at the time to feel I could not afford the tickets. It goes some way to make up for this lapse that I have seen Joyce... 