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Author: Chiara Strazzulla

Marriage of Figaro, Welsh National Opera

The beautiful thing about The Marriage of Figaro is that, a couple centuries after it was written, it still holds up. Indeed – and differently from many other opera comedies, whose hijinks can feel forced and outdated to a contemporary audience – it can easily read as commentary on a number of topics our modern sensitivities are…

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Opera Favourites At The Movies, Welsh National Opera

Opera Favourites At The Movies, WNO It is time for a concert showcase at the WNO – an excellent opportunity to leave to the side any concerns with how to visually narrate a storyline or express the deeper themes of a work through staging, and simply entertain the audience with a pure display of technical…

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Death in Venice, Britten, Welsh National Opera at Wales Millennium Centre

**** The first instalment in this year’s WNO Spring season was a revisitation of a classic, and so it feels very balanced that we are now invited to explore the dark (and, in places, insalubrious) world of a more esoteric work, one that was produced well after the heyday of classical opera and that is…

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Così Fan Tutte, Welsh National Opera

Wales Millennium Centre *** There are some works which are harder to look at under a modern lens than others, and Così Fan Tutte is certainly one of that number. To bring to a stage, in 2024, a work that is literally titled ‘they’re all the same’ is inevitably to contend with its glaring sexism,…

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A conservative and beautiful La Traviata, Welsh National Opera, Wales Millennium Centre

What else can be done with La Traviata that has not been done already? Giuseppe Verdi’s most famous work, the one many regard as the quintessential opera, has been through such a huge number of incarnations, revisitations and reimaginings – some more fortunate than others – that one would be truly hard pressed to think…

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Cherry Town Moscow from WNO Youth Opera

As the headlines in the news have inevitably stoked an anti-Russian sentiment which is at risk of extending from the political decision-makers to the Russian people who too are their victims – and as episodes of censorship suggesting the erasure of all things Russian-related have repeatedly been pointed out in recent month – it is…

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Welsh National Opera’s innovative Migrations project

June is barely over, and already this is proving to be a very interesting Summer for new operas. This is especially exciting given the existing rhetoric around the idea that opera is an old and dusty artform, incapable of representing the contemporary world, and so it is a special delight to see an increasingly broad…

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An innovative take on Butterfly from WNO

There is plenty of tricky ground to tread when bringing Madam Butterfly to the stage. One of Puccini’s masterwork, the opera is so well-known, even within the broader boundaries of pop culture, that it is a challenge in itself to approach it from a new angle, without repeating something that has already been done to exhaustion while…

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Jenůfa, Welsh National Opera

The WNO continues in its exploration of the works of Czech composer Leoš Janáček, this time going back to the early stages of his career to offer a new production of this 1904 work, known originally under the title of Její pastorkyňa (Her Stepdaughter) before being most commonly titled after the name of its protagonist….

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La Traviata, Welsh National Opera, WMC

Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata is possibly one of the most famous operas of all times, containing a number of equally famous arias that would be easily recognisable even to the ear of the layman. This poses an additional challenge to the cast, called to match a degree of expectation from the audience that is likely…

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