Month: July 2026
A Tristan und Isolde that shocked the audience into silence. Longborough Festival Opera.
For several seconds after the last chord had faded, nobody moved. No cough, no rustle, no premature clap, just a whole auditorium held, as if exhaling would break something. Only when the spell finally cracked did it give way to an ovation that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than the usual reflex of applause….
Grange Park’s Ring roars into life, once the electrics stop playing up
Grange Park warned us it would be hot. So hot that Das Rheingold, normally played in one unbroken run, would get a fifteen‑minute cooling‑off break. As it turned out, the heat was not a problem. The only real trouble was seemingly technical. Charlie Edwards’s concept for Grange Park Opera’s new Ring Cycle, judging from the…
Macbeth, Verdi. All the world’s a stage…to quote another play Longborough Festival Opera
Karolina Sofulak’s new production of Macbeth is one of those evenings that leaves you admiring the thinking behind it more than the theatrical experience itself. There is no shortage of ideas. Designer Kimie Nakano’s landscape of twisted steel, dominated by what resembles the skeletal remains of a collapsed electricity pylon, immediately evokes a kingdom poisoned…