Month: June 2026
Il ritorno d’Ulisse, Garsington Opera at Wormsley
★★★★★ Il ritorno d’Ulisse is probably the hardest of Monteverdi’s surviving works to bring off on a contemporary stage. First heard during Venice’s 1639–40 carnival season, Ulisse is now called part of a trilogy of Monteverdi works, although that is only a modern term for what has survived. Ulisse, and Orefo which has already been…
Don Carlo, Grange Park Opera
**** Verdi’s Don Carlo remains one of opera’s most compelling examinations of power, politics and human frailty. Packed with forbidden love, friendship, betrayal, religious fanaticism and political manoeuvring, it is also one of the composer’s most demanding works, requiring six principal singers capable of sustaining a drama that unfolds over four acts of intense musical…
Orlando, Longborough Festival Opera
Orlando, Longborough Festival Opera Handel’s Orlando is not the easiest sell. The plot is gloriously convoluted, the action often stops dead while somebody sings about their feelings for ten minutes, and it sits somewhere between pastoral romance, psychological drama and outright fantasy. Yet Longborough Festival Opera’s new production makes a remarkably strong case for the…