The Flying Dutchman, WNO
20th April 2026
Decline of WNO reflected by meagre new season
15th April 2026
*** Hold on tight, this is quite a ride. This is, to use a cliché, no picnic, despite the long supper interval at this Surrey opera festival. Rather, Grange Park Opera served up a gruesome feast of brutality and betrayal, with lashes of blazing vocal power, and theatrical ferocity. Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa (1883) is based on…
*** There is only one real test of a successful performance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. That is whether you leave with a tear in your eye as no matter how much a director may wish to play with you intellectually, this is a work that must succeed emotionally. Yes, for some it is a difficult…
Tickets are now on sale for Cowbridge Music Festival 2025, a celebration of Welsh talent, global voices, and new commissions. The festival take splaces between September 12 and 21 at venues across the Vale of Glamorgan town. The organisers promise this year will present an eclectic and vibrant line-up across ten days this September, blending…
**** Opera Holland Park’s choice of The Flying Dutchman for its first foray into the Wagnerian world (or cult) is both inspired and courageous. Inspired as it is Wagner’s most accessible opera (and short). Courageous as it demands vast amounts of drama, and much of that comes from the orchestra which has to be limited…
*** This is a no-holds barred nightmare of red velvet and megalomania. It is the story of what happens to a family after the death of its head, its Master, Richard Wagner, in attempting to maintain and fulfil his legacy against a backdrop of the darkest days in modern European history. At its core is…
With directors jostling to reinterpret Puccini, Ellen Kent’s Madama Butterfly at the New Theatre, Cardiff was a breath of fresh air—traditional, heartfelt, and free of gimmickry. At a time when many stagings feel the need to modernise, deconstruct, or appease contemporary anxieties, Kent offers something increasingly rare: an unembellished, faithful telling that allows Puccini’s haunting…
WNO Youth Opera New Theatre, Cardiff Hats off to the large (very) number of young people who formed two casts to give two polished performances of this feelgood show. The bilingual production takes the trope of two different groups who have been separated, try to a come together, are divided by what they see as…
I start with a confession: I am no longer a Britten virgin. Despite all my years of going to WNO productions I had never seen a Britten, not even their recently acclaimed Death in Venice. In part this was because Britten did not appeal to me, so I was both curious and trepidatious to see…
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…
| Powered by WordPress | Theme by TheBootstrapThemes
