ENO
Blue, English National Opera review - the company’s boldest vindication yet?Monday, 24 April 2023![]() Two recent operas by women have opened in London’s two main houses within a week. Both have superbly crafted librettos dealing with gun violence without a shot being fired, giddyingly fine production values and true ensembles guided by perfect... Read more... |
The Dead City, English National Opera review - strong dream world, weak love storyMonday, 27 March 2023![]() Is Korngold a second-rank composer with some first-rate ideas? Most performances of the 23-year-old Viennese prodigy's Die tote Stadt make it seem so. Nearly smothered in glitter and craft, the story can compel – an oblique, promising stance on... Read more... |
The Rhinegold, English National Opera review - tacky, edgy, brilliantMonday, 20 February 2023![]() All that glitters, titular treasure included, is dangerous childsplay in Richard Jones’s third UK staging of what Wagner called the “preliminary evening” to the three main operas of The Ring of the Nibelung. It’s nothing like the previous two, for... Read more... |
An open letter from Dame Sarah Connolly and colleagues to Arts Council EnglandMonday, 28 November 2022![]() The decision of Arts Council England to withdraw funding from the English National Opera and force it to move out of London is not only another hammer blow to the opera industry but it has huge ramifications for the extensive number of British... Read more... |
It’s a Wonderful Life, English National Opera review - Capra’s sharp-edged sentiment smothered in endless schmaltzSaturday, 26 November 2022![]() Looking for a sparkly operatic musical, well sung and played, slick and saturated in a range of mainstream styles that stop short in the year the movie masterpiece It’s a Wonderful Life was released, 1946? Then Jake Heggie’s 2016 confection may be... Read more... |
First Person: conductor Leo Hussain on why we still need English National Opera in LondonWednesday, 16 November 2022![]() I still remember vividly my first encounter with ENO. I was taken, as a nine-year-old boy, on a school trip to see a performance of Peter Grimes. And I was hooked. I pestered my parents to take me back several times to that same production. I can... Read more... |
The Yeomen of the Guard, English National Opera review - half-good shot at an unusual G&S misallianceFriday, 04 November 2022![]() Sullivan’s Overture to The Yeomen of the Guard isn’t quite the equal of Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger – what is? – but its brass-rich brilliance and wholesome ceremonials wouldn’t have been possible without that great example. Cue... Read more... |
Tosca, English National Opera review - a tale of two erasSaturday, 01 October 2022![]() Rome, 14/15 June 1800: the specifics of the original Sardou melodrama are preserved in Puccini’s thriller mixing love, lust, religion and tyranny. Many productions move forward in time, and sometimes change the place, with ease: after all, feudalist... Read more... |
The Handmaid's Tale, English National Opera review - a red-hot classic for our timesSaturday, 09 April 2022![]() However familiar you are with The Handmaid’s Tale in Margaret Atwood’s novel or its TV adaptation, you might still be knocked sideways by the impact it makes as an opera. Poul Ruders’s music plunges us viscerally into its emotional world,... Read more... |
The Cunning Little Vixen, English National Opera review - half-realised men and beastsMonday, 21 February 2022![]() Nature in the form of Storm Eunice stopped this Cunning Little Vixen in her tracks on Friday evening. ENO shrugged off the cancellation and rescheduled for Sunday afternoon. And here we were, getting the essential message that humans must reach an... Read more... |
The Valkyrie, English National Opera review - fitfully flickering flamesSaturday, 20 November 2021![]() That the ever-decreasing circles of Richard Jones’s first Wagner Ring instalment for English National Opera ended in a no-show for the fire that should have made former Valkyrie supreme Brünnhilde proof against all but a fearless hero – Westminster... Read more... |
HMS Pinafore, English National Opera review - shipshape classic comedy craftSaturday, 30 October 2021![]() Yes, it was bound to be HMS Laugh-a-minute, given Cal “One Man, Two Guvnors” McCrystal’s ENO comedy riffs on an already funny early G&S classic, but what does this tight little craft have to say to Little England today?That a British sailor’s “... Read more... |
