sat 04/10/2025

Opera reviews, news and interviews

Ariodante: Raphaël Pichon, Ensemble Pygmalion, Opéra Garnier, Paris review - a blast of Baroque beauty

Mark Kidel

The revival of Robert Carsen’s production of Handel’s Ariodante at the Opéra Garnier in Paris under the direction of Raphaël Pichon, with his Ensemble Pygmalion and a top-notch cast, is well worth a trip to Paris. At over four hours, it might seem daunting, but the show is as close to perfection as opera can be, bursting with vitality and emotion, and never feels a second too long.

Cinderella/La Cenerentola, English National Opera review - the truth behind the tinsel

Boyd Tonkin

When you go to the prince’s ball, would you prefer a night of sobriety or excess? Julia Burbach’s new production of Rossini’s Cinderella (La Cenerentola) for English National Opera frankly errs on the side of theatrical over-indulgence.

 

Tosca, Royal Opera review - Ailyn Pérez steps in...

David Nice

Forget Anna Netrebko, if you ever gave the Russian Scarpia’s former cultural ambassador much thought (theartsdesk wouldn’t). It should be uphill from...

Tosca, Welsh National Opera review - a great...

Stephen Walsh

So it’s come to this: WNO’s autumn season reduced to two operas, a Tosca borrowed from Opera North and a revival of their own Candide from two years...

BBC Proms: The Marriage of Figaro, Glyndebourne...

Boyd Tonkin

One door closes, and another one opens. A lot. It’s extraordinary what value those two simple additions to the Royal Albert Hall stage lent to...

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BBC Proms: Suor Angelica, LSO, Pappano review - earthly passion, heavenly grief

Boyd Tonkin

A Sister to remember blesses Puccini's convent tragedy

Orpheus and Eurydice, Opera Queensland/SCO, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - dazzling, but distracting

Simon Thompson

Eye-popping acrobatics don’t always assist in Gluck’s quest for operatic truth

MARS, Irish National Opera review - silly space oddity with fun stretches

David Nice

Cast, orchestra and production give Jennifer Walshe’s bold collage their all

Káťa Kabanová, Glyndebourne review - emotional concentration in a salle modulable

Stephen Walsh

Janáček superbly done through or in spite of the symbolism

Buxton International Festival 2025 review - a lavish offering of smaller-scale work

Robert Beale

Allison Cook stands out in a fascinating integrated double bill of Bernstein and Poulenc

Tosca, Clonter Opera review - beauty and integrity in miniature

Robert Beale

Happy surprises and a convincing interpretation of Puccini for today

Hamlet, Buxton International Festival review - how to re-imagine re-imagined Shakespeare

Robert Beale

Music comes first in very 19th century, very Romantic, very French operatic creation

Falstaff, Glyndebourne review - knockabout and nostalgia in postwar Windsor

Boyd Tonkin

A fat knight to remember, and snappy stagecraft, overcome some tedious waits

Salome, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - a partnership in a million

David Nice

Asmik Grigorian is vocal perfection in league with a great conductor and orchestra

Semele, Royal Opera review - unholy smoke

David Nice

Style comes and goes in a justifiably dark treatment of Handelian myth

Le nozze di Figaro, Glyndebourne review - perceptive humanity in period setting

David Nice

Mostly glorious cast, sharp ideas, fussy conducting

Fidelio, Garsington Opera review - a battle of sunshine and shadows

Boyd Tonkin

Intimacy yields to spectacle as Beethoven's light of freedom triumphs

Dangerous Matter, RNCM, Manchester review - opera meets science in an 18th century tale

Robert Beale

Big doses of history and didaction are injected into 50 minutes of music theatre

Mazeppa, Grange Park Opera review - a gripping reassessment

Stephen Walsh

Unbalanced drama with a powerful core, uninhibitedly staged

Saul, Glyndebourne review - playful, visually ravishing descent into darkness

Rachel Halliburton

Ten years after it first opened Barrie Kosky's production still packs a hefty punch

Così fan tutte, Nevill Holt Festival/Opera North review - re-writing the script

Boyd Tonkin

Real feeling turns the tables on stage artifice in Mozart that charms, and moves

La Straniera, Chelsea Opera Group, Barlow, Cadogan Hall review - diva power saves minor Bellini

David Nice

Australian soprano Helena Dix is honoured by fine fellow singers, but not her conductor

The Queen of Spades, Garsington Opera review - sonorous gliding over a heart of darkness

David Nice

Striking design and clear concept, but the intensity within comes and goes

The Flying Dutchman, Opera Holland Park review - into the storm of dreams

Boyd Tonkin

A well-skippered Wagnerian voyage between fantasy and realism

Il Trittico, Opéra de Paris review - reordered Puccini works for a phenomenal singing actor

David Nice

Asmik Grigorian takes all three soprano leads in a near-perfect ensemble

Faust, Royal Opera review - pure theatre in this solid revival

Alexandra Coghlan

A Faust that smuggles its damnation under theatrical spectacle and excess

Pygmalion, Early Opera Company, Curnyn, Middle Temple Hall review - Rameau magic outside the opera house

Alexandra Coghlan

Welcome opportunity to catch opera-ballet, though not everything is in perfect focus

Parsifal, Glyndebourne review - the music flies up, the drama remains below

David Nice

Incandescent singing and playing, but the production domesticates the numinous

Giulio Cesare, The English Concert, Bicket, Barbican review - 10s across the board in perfect Handel

David Nice

When you get total musicality from everyone involved, there’s nothing better

Footnote: a brief history of opera in Britain

Britain has world-class opera companies in the Royal Opera, English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera and Opera North, not to mention the celebrated country-house festival at Glyndebourne and others elsewhere. The first English opera was an experiment in 1656, as Civil War raged between Cromwell and Charles II, and it was under the restored king that theatre and opera exploded in London. Henry Purcell composed the masterpiece Dido and Aeneas (for a girls' school) and over the next century Handel, Gluck, J C Bach and Haydn came to London to compose Italian-style classical operas.

Hogarth_Beggars_Opera_1731_cTateHowever, the imported style was challenged by the startling success of John Gay's low-life street opera The Beggar's Opera (1728), a score collating 69 folk ballads, which set off a wave of indigenous popular musical theatre (pictured, William Hogarth's The Beggar's Opera, 1731, © Tate). Gay built the first Covent Garden opera house (1732), where three of Handel's operas were premiered, and musical theatre and vaudeville flourished as an alternative to opera. Through the 19th century, London became a hub for visiting composers and grand opera stars, but from the meshing of "high" and "popular" creativity at Sadler's Wells (built in 1765) evolved in time a distinct English tradition of wit and social satire in the "Savoy" operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.

In the 20th century Benjamin Britten's dramatic operas such as Peter Grimes and Billy Budd reflected a different sort of ordinariness, his genius driving the formation of the English Opera Group at Aldeburgh. English opera, and opera in English, became central to the establishment, after the Second World War, of a national arts infrastructure, with subsidised resident companies at English National Opera and the Royal Opera. By the 1950s, due to pressure from international opera stars refusing to learn roles in English, Covent Garden joined the circuit of major international houses, staging opera in their original languages, with visiting stars such as Maria Callas, Tito Gobbi and the young Luciano Pavarotti matched by home-grown ones like Joan Sutherland and Geraint Evans.

Today British opera thrives with a reputation for fresh thinking in classics, from new productions of Mozart, Verdi and Wagner landmarks to new opera commissions and popular arena stagings of Carmen. The Arts Desk brings you the fastest overnight reviews and the quickest ticket booking links for last night's openings, as well as the most thoughtful close-up interviews with major creative figures and performers. Our critics include Igor Toronyi-Lalic, David Nice, Edward Seckerson, Alexandra Coghlan, Graham Rickson and Ismene Brown.

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