After Calixto Bieito’s radical reimaging of Carmen, which opened at English National Opera this week, David McVicar’s version at Glyndebourne was bound to seem conservative. But it turned out to be a comparison of apples and Seville oranges: Bieito is certainly bolder, but McVicar is more sophisticated and digs deeper into the raw emotions of the work. It’s not a new production, but revival director Marie Lambert has kept it fresh, aided by a stunning cast and dynamic, energised conducting from Jakub Hrůša.McVicar sets his Carmen in the mid-to-late 19th century, a gentle updating that is most Read more ...

Fashion is a funny thing, in opera no less than the sartorial trappings that go with it (everything from tight, hipster trews to billowing ballgowns at last night's Glyndebourne season opening, in case you were wondering). Donizetti's classical tragedy Poliuto is historically a miss rather than a hit, never quite finding its footing in the repertoire, despite some early success. But on the strength – and strength of appropriately gladiatorial proportions it really is – of Glyndebourne's exceptional cast, Poliuto may yet make its case as a classic: a sober meditation on Read more ...

Crotch-grabbing, suggestions of oral and anal sex, stylized punching and kicking and other casual violence offer diminishing returns in your standard Calixto Bieito production. Sometimes a scene or two flashes focused brilliance, which only makes you wonder why he doesn’t apply the same rigour throughout. His 17-year-old Carmen has more such fitful insights than most of his other shows, and they’re very much complemented here by assured conducting and singing to make this punchy edition of Bizet’s amazing score, shorn of most of its dialogue, flash past at an energetic and colourful pace in Read more ...

This was a very "concert" performance indeed. Across the stage music stands stood like sentinels lest any rash singer attempted to stand out and – surely not – act. Such fears were misplaced (or the stands did their job) in the end, as the music was what mattered and everyone stood and sang, with one outstanding exception, the Kundry of Mihoko Fujimura.It can be no coincidence that of all the singers on stage she knew her role most intimately, and had worked for some years with Stefan Herheim in his celebrated production at Bayreuth. That said, Burkhard Fritz (pictured below) has sung the Read more ...

"The darkness deceived me," sings Leonora in Act I as she mistakenly rushes into the arms of the Count di Luna, rather than those of her beloved, the mysterious troubador Manrico who’s been serenading her for nights on end. Seeing Robert B Dickson’s sepulchral lighting in Scottish Opera’s semi-new production of Verdi’s melodramatic shocker Il trovatore – an updated version of the company’s 1992 staging – you can understand why. The production’s Caravaggio-esque gloomy depths and ominous, looming shadows (used to particularly grotesque and unsettling effect in the famous "Anvil Chorus") soon Read more ...

I must have been one of the few in Saturday’s audience for Richard Ayres’s new opera who had never seen Barrie’s play or read the book, so I’m unable to judge how faithfully it renders the original – in case that matters. Somehow one knows the dramatis personae: Peter Pan himself, the Darling family, Nana the dog-nurse, Captain Hook, Tinkerbell, Tiger Lily and of course the ticking crocodile, who swallowed Hook’s watch along with his arm. They are all here, wittily, sometimes brilliantly, reimagined in Keith Warner’s panto-like staging. What eluded me, and perhaps not only me, was the Read more ...

Over the past decade Alice Coote has emerged as a singer of rare and exquisite vocal quality. Even when the direction of a project is questioned, there has generally been consensus that she generally sounds gorgeous. The concept of Being Both, a juxtaposition of Handel mezzo arias for both male and female characters, is brilliant both musically and commercially. It allows a fascinating exploration of identity and sexuality in a period when both, in opera, were pretty fluid; and it makes, conveniently, for a programme of Handel’s greatest hits.It’s unfortunate that according to director Read more ...

When ENO announced its return to Gilbert and Sullivan, rapture at the news that Mike Leigh, genius Topsy-Turvy director, would be the master of wonderland ceremonies was modified by its choice, The Pirates of Penzance. Last staged at the Coliseum – and unmemorably – as recently as 2004, the fifth Savoy opera seemed less in need of revisiting than several larger-scale successors. By the end of last night, though, it was clear not only that Leigh and his musical team had been the best possible choice to tackle this work of classical perfection, but also that if operatic schedules could be Read more ...

Jiří Bělohlávek and the BBC Symphony Orchestra are on to a good thing with Czech opera. Prague is a major centre for world-class opera, but much of the repertoire performed there is all but unknown abroad. Bělohlávek, who holds positions in both Prague and London, has found a way to broaden its audience: presenting a series of concert performances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and soloists brought in from the State Opera. The repertoire may be obscure, at least for London audiences, but the idiomatic performances that result ensure nothing is treated as a mere curiosity. Here we have a Read more ...

How many words would you expect in an average libretto? 10,000? 15,000? Whatever that number is you can triple it and then some for The Virtues of Things – a new opera from Sally O’Reilly and Matt Rogers of astonishing, exhausting, battering wordiness. And with all these extra words what does it have to say? Not a great deal, frankly.If you’ve read your Saussure – or, failing that, Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude would do – then you’ll be familiar with the concept of "signifiers" and "signifieds". (Yes, a basic knowledge of semiotics really is necessary to get to grips with an opera Read more ...

Let’s get one thing straight at the outset: Szymanowski’s 1926 opera Król Roger isn’t a lovely occasional oddity, a rarity whose appeal is largely novelty, or a dust-it-off-once-a-decade sort of piece. It’s that rarest of things, a real and original masterpiece whose worth has been unaccountably undervalued. This new production by Kasper Holten does nothing to obscure its beauty, making a strong case not only for the work’s sensual appeal, but also the larger philosophical architecture underpinning this maverick score.That Król Roger has recently begun to enjoy more attention internationally Read more ...

Judge Judy meets The Only Way Is Essex: this endlessly resourceful production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s first (mini) masterpiece Trial by Jury is one that cries out to appear on TV. Which in a make-believe sense it does: we’re the audience in the studio where Court on Camera is about to air. A warm-up chappie who turns out to be the Usher (Wagnerian bass-baritone in training Martin Lamb) – on other Sundays it will be a lady – gauges our capacity to applaud and boo, and we’re off on a case of breach of promise of marriage as you never saw it before.The pleasure is doubled because in Charles Read more ...