wed 11/06/2025

Opera reviews, news and interviews

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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and eclectic team of arts and culture writers went ahead with an ambitious plan – to launch a dedicated internet site devoted to coverage of the UK arts scene.

Saul, Glyndebourne review - playful, visually ravishing descent into darkness

Rachel Halliburton

This thrilling production of Saul takes Handel’s dramatisation of the Bible’s first Book of Samuel and paints it in pictures ranging from grotesque exuberance to monochromatic expressionism. From the earliest flamboyant images, dominated by the disquieting presence of Goliath’s decapitated head, to an encounter with the Witch of Endor that has the starkness of Beckett, this tale of jealousy and betrayal grips you to the bitter end.

 

Così fan tutte, Nevill Holt Festival/Opera North...

Boyd Tonkin

Marianne Moore once famously defined poems as “imaginary gardens with real toads in them”. Operas also fill, or anyway should fill, their artificial...

La Straniera, Chelsea Opera Group, Barlow,...

David Nice

Chelsea Opera Group has made its own luck in winning the devotion of two great bel canto exponents: Nelly Miricioiu between 1998 and 2010, Helena Dix...

The Queen of Spades, Garsington Opera review -...

David Nice

Recent events have prompted the assertion – understandable in Ukraine – that the idea of the Russian soul is a nationalist myth. This production...

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The Flying Dutchman, Opera Holland Park review - into the storm of dreams

Boyd Tonkin

A well-skippered Wagnerian voyage between fantasy and realism

Il Trittico, Opéra de Paris review - reordered Puccini works for a phenomenal singing actor

David Nice

Asmik Grigorian takes all three soprano leads in a near-perfect ensemble

Faust, Royal Opera review - pure theatre in this solid revival

Alexandra Coghlan

A Faust that smuggles its damnation under theatrical spectacle and excess

Pygmalion, Early Opera Company, Curnyn, Middle Temple Hall review - Rameau magic outside the opera house

Alexandra Coghlan

Welcome opportunity to catch opera-ballet, though not everything is in perfect focus

Parsifal, Glyndebourne review - the music flies up, the drama remains below

David Nice

Incandescent singing and playing, but the production domesticates the numinous

Giulio Cesare, The English Concert, Bicket, Barbican review - 10s across the board in perfect Handel

David Nice

When you get total musicality from everyone involved, there’s nothing better

The Excursions of Mr Brouček, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - sensuousness, fire and comedy in perfect balance

David Nice

Janáček’s wacky space-and-time-travel opera glows and grips in every bar

Pimpinone, Royal Opera in the Linbury Theatre review - farce with a sting in its tail

David Nice

Telemann’s comic opera hits the mark thanks to two fine, well-directed young singers

Die Walküre, Royal Opera review - total music drama

David Nice

Kosky, Pappano and their singers soar on both wings of Wagner’s double tragedy

Simon Boccanegra, Opera North review - ‘dramatic staging’ proves its worth

Robert Beale

Verdi’s political tragedy - and plea for peace - has impact in a grand Yorkshire setting

Peter Grimes, Welsh National Opera review - febrile energy and rage

Stephen Walsh

In every sense a tour de force

Owen Wingrave, RNCM, Manchester review - battle of a pacifist

Robert Beale

Orpha Phelan brings on the big guns for Britten’s charge against war

Tales of Apollo and Hercules, London Handel Festival review - compelling elements, but a failed experiment

Rachel Halliburton

Conceptually the two cantatas just don't work together

La finta giardiniera, The Mozartists, Cadogan Hall review - blooms in the wild garden

Boyd Tonkin

Mozart's rambling early opera can still smell sweet

Der fliegende Holländer, Irish National Opera review - sailing to nowhere

David Nice

Plenty of strong singing and playing, but the staging is static or inept

Die Zauberflöte, Royal Academy of Music review - first-rate youth makes for a moving experience

David Nice

The production takes time to match Mozart's depths, but gets there halfway through

Mansfield Park, Guildhall School review - fun when frothy, chugging in romantic entanglements

David Nice

Jonathan Dove’s strip-cartoon Jane Austen works well as a showcase for students

Uprising, Glyndebourne review - didactic community opera superbly performed

David Nice

Jonathan Dove and April De Angelis go for the obvious, but this is still a rewarding project

Fledermaus, Irish National Opera review - sex, please, we're Viennese/American/Russian/Irish

David Nice

Vivacious company makes the party buzz, does what it can around it

The Capulets and the Montagues, English Touring Opera review - the wise guys are singing like canaries

Boyd Tonkin

There's a bel canto feast when Bellini joins the Mob

Mary, Queen of Scots, English National Opera review - heroic effort for an overcooked history lesson

David Nice

Heidi Stober delivers as beleaguered regent, but Thea Musgrave's opera is limiting

Festen, Royal Opera review - firing on every front

David Nice

No slack in Mark-Anthony Turnage's operatic treatment of the visceral first Dogme film

Phaedra + Minotaur, Royal Ballet and Opera, Linbury Theatre review - a double dose of Greek myth

Jenny Gilbert

Opera and dance companies share a theme in this terse but affecting double bill

The Marriage of Figaro, Welsh National Opera review - no concessions and no holds barred

Stephen Walsh

Compelling revival, punches, placards and all

Footnote: a brief history of opera in Britain

Britain has world-class opera companies in the Royal Opera, English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera and Opera North, not to mention the celebrated country-house festival at Glyndebourne and others elsewhere. The first English opera was an experiment in 1656, as Civil War raged between Cromwell and Charles II, and it was under the restored king that theatre and opera exploded in London. Henry Purcell composed the masterpiece Dido and Aeneas (for a girls' school) and over the next century Handel, Gluck, J C Bach and Haydn came to London to compose Italian-style classical operas.

Hogarth_Beggars_Opera_1731_cTateHowever, the imported style was challenged by the startling success of John Gay's low-life street opera The Beggar's Opera (1728), a score collating 69 folk ballads, which set off a wave of indigenous popular musical theatre (pictured, William Hogarth's The Beggar's Opera, 1731, © Tate). Gay built the first Covent Garden opera house (1732), where three of Handel's operas were premiered, and musical theatre and vaudeville flourished as an alternative to opera. Through the 19th century, London became a hub for visiting composers and grand opera stars, but from the meshing of "high" and "popular" creativity at Sadler's Wells (built in 1765) evolved in time a distinct English tradition of wit and social satire in the "Savoy" operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.

In the 20th century Benjamin Britten's dramatic operas such as Peter Grimes and Billy Budd reflected a different sort of ordinariness, his genius driving the formation of the English Opera Group at Aldeburgh. English opera, and opera in English, became central to the establishment, after the Second World War, of a national arts infrastructure, with subsidised resident companies at English National Opera and the Royal Opera. By the 1950s, due to pressure from international opera stars refusing to learn roles in English, Covent Garden joined the circuit of major international houses, staging opera in their original languages, with visiting stars such as Maria Callas, Tito Gobbi and the young Luciano Pavarotti matched by home-grown ones like Joan Sutherland and Geraint Evans.

Today British opera thrives with a reputation for fresh thinking in classics, from new productions of Mozart, Verdi and Wagner landmarks to new opera commissions and popular arena stagings of Carmen. The Arts Desk brings you the fastest overnight reviews and the quickest ticket booking links for last night's openings, as well as the most thoughtful close-up interviews with major creative figures and performers. Our critics include Igor Toronyi-Lalic, David Nice, Edward Seckerson, Alexandra Coghlan, Graham Rickson and Ismene Brown.

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