Il ritorno d’Ulisse, Garsington Opera at Wormsley
20th June 2026
Don Carlo, Grange Park Opera
15th June 2026
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 Indeed – and differently from many other opera comedies, whose hijinks can feel forced and outdated to a contemporary audience – it can easily read as commentary on a number of topics our modern sensitivities are…
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…
Wales’ musical knight Bryn Terfel tells me he is always looking for another feather for his cap and there will be plenty to add in 2025. Launching a new singing competition with the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama; working as a coach on Yr Llais, S4C’s Welsh language version of The Voice, being…
Touring across Wales and the Borders, visiting 12 local venues which are rooted in their community, the Mid Wales Opera 2024 SmallStages tour of Pagliacci saw a 37% increase in average ticket sales per venue compared to the previous year. After receiving a lifeline in the form of a grant from Powys County Council’s Shared…
Abergavenny Borough Theatre Mid Wales Opera is like many other touring companies in scaling down for relatively small venues those works written to fill out bigger ones; but, unlike most of them, it has made an art and a virtue of miniaturisation. Given reasonable parameters, most operas can be reduced to basics: with a few…
Mozart Süreyya Opera Sahnesi, Istanbul There is something special seeing a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio” in Istanbul, which is, of course, where the opera is set. However, the venue is not the Topkapi but a gorgeous 1920s theatre. This absolute jewel of a theatre is in the Kadiköy…
Il turco in Italia, Gioachino Rossini For the first time revived at Glyndebourne, the 2001 production by French director Mariame Clément is truly entertaining and very enjoyable. The concept of the piece revolves around a contemporary writer, Prosdocimo, suffering from writer’s block, who flips through a travel magazine and creates all sorts of characters and…
In Ruggero Leoncavallo’s iconic opera, Pagliacci, we witness the tragic unraveling of a man consumed by jealousy and grief, his theatrical role tragically mirroring the heartbreak of his own life. It’s a story that speaks to the vulnerability of the human condition—a theme that resonates with touring companies today as they face the very real threat of dwindling…
| Powered by WordPress | Theme by TheBootstrapThemes
