by Claudia Pritchard | Jul 2, 2026 | Music
Lisette Oropesa as Elvira in Bellini’s ‘I puritani’. Photo: Tristram Kenton Verdi’s Il trovatore is said to need only the four best singers in the world, but pretty much the same goes for the earlier composer Vincenzo Bellini’s I... 
by Claudia Pritchard | Feb 4, 2026 | Drama, Music, Uncategorized
Boris Godunov/Mark Wigglesworth Royal Opera House, January 29, 2026 Reluctant to rule, Boris Godunov cuts an arresting figure, not with his high-profile bragging but with his capacity for self-doubt. In the second revival of Richard Jones’s spectacular... 
by Lucien Jenkins | Nov 23, 2021 | Music
The question of when and where to set Wagner’s Ring is an entirely open one, since like Arthur and Lear, it is everywhere and nowhere. Richard Jones (director) and Stewart Laing (set and costume designer) answer this by locating Act 1 of Valkyrie in a Wickes shed, Act... 
by Tom Sutcliffe | May 28, 2019 | Music
Byway to hell All Berlioz’s few operas are highly original in structure and intention – a characteristic encouraged by this brilliant composer’s obsession with Shakespeare as a model alien in French culture. But his Damnation de Faust is not an opera, more...