Picture a Day Like This at the Royal Opera House: A beautiful ode to hope October 3, 2023 What does it mean to look for a miracle? Hope, as a uniquely human impulse, is the focus of composer George Benjamin and writer Martin Crimp’s latest operatic endeavour, Picture a day like this. This eagerly anticipated fourth collaboration between Benjamin and Crimp marks a departure from their grander operatic triumphs. Picture a day like [...]
Innocence at ROH: School shooting opera is brutal but brilliant April 20, 2023 Opera, that most dramatic of art forms, has routinely attracted the most tragic of narratives. Torture, tyranny, poverty: there is an opera for every personal and political hardship, and now, with Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence, there’s an opera for the most modern of tragedies, a school shooting. Innocence begins at the wedding of Stela and Tuomas, [...]
Akhnaten returns to the ENO – it’s amazing but it’s already sold out April 3, 2023 “His sun hath risen’ – Akhnaten returns!” The English National Opera’s now famous production of Philip Glass’s opera has been here, there, and everywhere since its first appearance in 2016, and has once again returned to the London Coliseum stage, with its brilliance thankfully intact. Akhnaten is Glass’s final opera in his trilogy of biographical [...]
This eco-conscious production of Rusalka by the RoH is the future March 1, 2023 The Royal Opera House, in collaboration with directors Natalie Abrahami and Ann Yee, has embarked on its first eco-conscious production, Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka. If you have ever thought that Hans Christian Anderson’s version of The Little Mermaid doesn’t really match the Disney spirit we associate with the tale, Dvorjak’s opera about the water nymph Rusalka [...]
Rhinegold at the London Coliseum is a delicious Wagnerian success February 24, 2023 Richard Jones’s tacky and triumphant Rhinegold is the most recent addition to the English National Opera’s Ring Cycle. After a mixed and shadowy Valkyrie, Jones has reembraced his familiar droll kitschiness with a glorious slice of dramatic and comedic gold, complete with delicious Wagnerian weirdness. Wagner’s opera follows the story of the Nibelung Alberich, who [...]
Carmen at the ENO: It’s back… again! February 9, 2023 Another year, another Carmen. The English National Opera, having secured another year of Arts Council funding in 2023, starts off the season with Bizet’s beloved opera. Carmen and Don José’s boy meets girl, girl spurns boy, boy kills girl, love story still satisfies the desire for operatic tragedy, even in director Calixto Bieito’s updated production. [...]
The Rape of Lucretia at the ROH is a muddled show that signals opera has a long way to go November 18, 2022 The Rape of Lucretia at the Royal Opera House is almost a great success. Director Oliver Mears’ intense staging possesses moments of pure violence and raw emotion, impressively pulled off by a cast drawn exclusively from operatic young artist programmes. However, it’s not quite a win for The Linbury Theatre, with the sexual politics of [...]
La Bohème at The Royal Opera House review October 23, 2022 Richard Jones’s La Bohème, now in its fourth revival at The Royal Opera House, is filled with glittering snow, bright lights, bold colours, and the (all too familiar) invisible hand of death and disease. Apologies for the doom and gloom, but no amount of 19th century Christmas jollity can make up for this Puccini classic [...]
The Boy with Two Hearts, National Theatre, review: Poignant tale of love October 14, 2022 The Boy With Two Hearts is a true story turned into a book by Hamed and Hessam Amiri, about their own journey from Herat to Cardiff, focusing on their brother Hussein and his chronic heart condition. Transformed into a play by Phil Porter and the Wales Millennium Centre, it is a poignant tale of love [...]
Tosca is the English National Opera show to catch this autumn October 7, 2022 The English National Opera returns for a brand new season – and it does so in style! Last seen at the Finnish National Opera in 2018, Christof Loy’s production of Puccini’s Tosca is the opening gambit of the 2022-2023 offering. Tosca not only includes some of Puccini’s finest arias, but is undoubtedly one of opera’s [...]