tue 01/07/2025

Opera Buzz

Public's chance to be an Olivier Awards 2014 judge

Ismene Brown

It's an offer from paradise for the keen arts-lover - free tickets to up to 30 must-see stage shows over the next year. The Olivier Awards traditionally include "public" members on their expert panels of professionals who assess the stage arts each year, and the Dance and Opera panels are looking for their public judges for the 2014 awards, which will judge shows starting from this March.

Read more...

There are more theatre-goers than football-goers - arts awards defiant

Ismene Brown

Henry Goodman, Imelda Staunton and Aidan McArdle won the big acting prizes while Akram Khan and Opera North carried off the dance and opera gongs at the annual Theatrical Management Association awards - now called Theatre Awards UK. Held yesterday at the medieval Guildhall in the City of London, the awards highlight the best of theatre, dance and opera in Britain's touring theatres selected by panels of critics.

Read more...

Opinion: Bazalgette is welcome at the Arts Council

Ismene Brown

So the chairman of Big Brother TV becomes chairman of the Arts Council. Is it good or bad that Sir Peter Bazalgette will now hold the purse-strings for our publicly supported arts, the most debated, the most fragile, the most ephemeral elements of our national cultural consciousness, the most opposite of the time-wasting that is reality TV?

Read more...

Arise, Sir Kenneth Branagh and Dame Zaha Hadid

Ismene Brown

Zaha Hadid, visionary architect of the London Olympics Aquatic Centre, becomes a Dame and three new knights of the arts are created in the Queen's Jubilee Birthday Honours announced this morning.

Read more...

A new opera about sex trafficking

Glyn Môn Hughes

The oldest profession is at the heart of one of the most popular operas in the canon. But the price put on a woman's sexuality will not be quite so glamorously portrayed in a new opera as it is in La Traviata. Ensemble 10/10, the contemporary music ensemble of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. will premiere Anya17, a new piece by Adam Gorb based on an arresting, highly disturbing libretto by Ben Kaye.

Read more...

New Year Honours: Sir Tony Pappano, Helena Bonham Carter CBE - and Sir Big Brother

Ismene Brown

Commercial TV's most influential and controversial figure Peter Bazalgette, mastermind of TV's Big Brother, Ground Force, Deal or No Deal and Ready, Steady, Cook!, is one of four arts knights announced in the New Year Honours. Bazalgette becomes a Sir alongside the Royal Opera House's musical director Antonio Pappano, Apple's chief designer Jonathan Ive and V&A Museum chairman and arts patron Paul Ruddock.

Read more...

Opera North: making London's flesh creep

David Nice

A disappointed man from Sheffield asked on a blog why Opera North was spoiling pampered London with two of its major productions and an offshoot this season when the rest of its vicinity was going operatically hungry. I can see his point, but we down here need to see what remarkable work this company can achieve (though we could always take a train to Leeds for the weekend, where there's plenty to see and do).

Read more...

Hall family and Wales shine in nationwide stage awards

Ismene Brown

Port Talbot’s staging of The Passion with Michael Sheen won the highest accolade at the Theatre Management Association Awards yesterday, which honour the best of work touring Britain beyond London during the 2010-11 season.

Read more...

Farewell, Salvatore Licitra

David Nice Licitra, a true Italian tenor

The Swiss-born Sicilian tenor has died, far too young at the age of 43, 10 days after an accident on his Vespa. He was one of the best and most stylish of his rare breed, even if the scrummage to find an heir to Pavarotti sometimes pushed him into a corner. I'll not forget his Alvaro in Verdi's La forza del Destino at Covent Garden: here after so long was another true Italian tenor with a golden middle range who could at least act with his voice.

Read more...

Rusalka returns to the Glyndebourne lake

David Nice Kiss him to death: Dina Kuznetsova's betrayed water sprite prepares for the love-death of her Prince (Pavel Cernoch)

It's a bit late for a straight review, I know, as this Glyndebourne Festival Opera revival of one of the most ingenious and (hopefully) enduring productions the company has seen in recent years opened three weeks ago. I was down there yesterday giving a pre-performance talk, buoyed in the knowledge that Dvořák's heart-piercing tale of a water nymph betrayed in her quest for a human soul would once again have the benefit of director Melly Still's special vision. But could this year's soprano...

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Semele, Royal Opera review - unholy smoke

Poor, slightly silly Semele fries at the sight of lover Jupiter casting off his mortal form, but in Congreve’s and Handel’s supposedly happy...

Sudan, Remember Us review - the revolution will be memorised

In 2019, French-Tunisian journalist and documentary filmmaker Hind Meddeb flew to Sudan after the overthrow of hated dictator Omar al-Bashir,...

Le nozze di Figaro, Glyndebourne review - perceptive humanit...

Over 100 years ago, John Christie envisaged Wagner’s Parsifal with limited forces in the Organ Room at Glyndebourne. He would have been...

Quadrophenia, Sadler's Wells review - missed opportunit...

The red, white and blue bull’s-eye on the front curtain at Sadler’s Wells tells us we are in the familiar territory of Pete Townshend’s...

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

Sometimes, as the first act of Beethoven’s Fidelio closes, the chorus of prisoners discreetly fade away backstage as their brief taste of...

Summer Laugh review - five comics gear up for the Fringe

Appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe has long been an expensive gig for comics. But while stand-ups may need only a microphone to ply...

Album: Brìghde Chaimbeul - Sunwise

The first five-and-a-half minutes of Sunwise’s opening track “Dùsgadh / Waking" are taken up by a drone. Played on the Scottish small...

Music Reissues Weekly: Rupert’s People - Dream In My Mind

Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was an instant phenomenon. Recorded in April 1967 and issued as a single on 12 May after pre-release play...

Intimate Apparel, Donmar Warehouse review - stirring story o...

The corset is an unlikely star of the latest Lynn Nottage play to arrive at the...