The Flying Dutchman, WNO
20th April 2026
Decline of WNO reflected by meagre new season
15th April 2026
The Sound Voice Project is a collaboration between people with lived experience of voice loss, opera singers Roderick Williams and Lucy Crowe, composer Hannah Conway, librettist Hazel Gould and professionals from across the biomedical research, technology and healthcare sectors, with video design by Luke Halls and sound design by David Sheppard. The installation is comprised…
Vache Baroque is now established as a late summer treat, with its combination of interesting and well-performed operatic choices and fun associated events in the grand house’s grounds. This year’s choice is Pergolesi’s L’Olimpiade and the setting of the 17th-century Buckinghamshire elegant building provides a suitable backdrop for this piece of baroque brightness – and…
The Chorégies d’Orange closed triumphantly on July 22, with a semi-staged version of Giacomo Puccini ‘s masterpiece Tosca, to which the festival wanted to pay tribute in this centenary year. The venue was full, especially since the cast assembled in the Provençal city by Jean-Louis Grinda had enough to make lyrical art aficionados from all…
Waterperry Opera Festival made the most of the glorious Waterperry Gardens and the elegant Georgian house for a veritable musical feast of summer lushness. This young, dynamic festival has developed into a real summer highlight. The Festival makes excellent use of the different spaces available for performance with the elegant period house that edges the…
Whether it is the most lavishly funded opera house or an independent summer festival, opera should be about the singing. Production qualities are important but must be seen as secondary. Sadly, this is not often the case. However, at the fascinating If Opera this short season you can see a performance of Donizetti’s Lucia di…
***** The delight in concept over content marked the approach of French director Mariame Clément to the difficult to stage Tales of Hoffman. Here she decided to make it a drunken, fallen, film director showing reels of his work with women with whom he had disastrously fallen in love. It is ultimately revealed that they…
The employment of artists with alleged links with Putin grabs headlines in the opera world. Thus, the decision of the Salzburg Festival to have Teodor Currentzis in the pit was sure to be controversial. However, if it was there was no indication of this from the audience at his return to conduct Don Giovanni, this…
Northern Ireland Opera begins rehearsals today for its fourth main stage production at the Grand Opera House, Belfast. Marking just over one month to go before the premiere of Eugene Onegin on the 14 September, this award-winning national opera company also unveils a stunning new photoshoot set in the woods featuring four of its principal…
Longborough Festival Opera **** As the summer sun beat down on the rolling grounds of Longborough, this highly enjoyable new production of La bohème opened in a somewhat unconventional manner: a Christmas carol. Instead of the familiar burst of an energetic orchestra, plunging the listener directly into the chilly world of the Parisian bohemians, it…
*** The audience for Götterdämmerung from Austrian director Valentin Schwarz’s infamous Ring cycle demonstrated the Bayreuth audience shows no fear in overdoing the booing for the creatives and lavishing too much praise on the singers. It seems something of a sport. This fourth section of the Ring Cycle is undoubtedly an unsatisfying take on the…
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