Following highly successful productions of John Adams’s Nixon in China and Doctor Atomic, ENO presents the London stage premiere of the American composer’s controversial ‘docu-opera’ about the killing of a Jewish-American tourist during the hijacking of a Mediterranean cruise liner by Palestinian militants. Alice Goodman’s eloquently poetic and dispassionately even-handed libretto mixes Biblical and Koranic [...]
Continue reading...Friday, February 4, 2011
A teenage boy is fatally stabbed. Another boy is caught on CCTV leaving the scene. An open-and-shut case, it would seem. But, as Detective Inspector Anne Strawson investigates the older boy’s story, she uncovers a bizarre nexus of chatroom meetings, false identities, fictitious spy rings and raunchy cybersex, leading to just one conclusion: it wasn’t [...]
Continue reading...Friday, February 4, 2011
Following its South Bank Show Award-winning productions of The Turn of the Screw and Peter Grimes, ENO continues to refresh its Britten repertoire with a new staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Magically mixing 20th-century modernism, rich romanticism and quasi-Purcellian fantasy, Britten’s score breathes a unique air all of its own, climaxing in a hilarious [...]
Continue reading...Saturday, August 7, 2010
Shakespeare’s tragedy of doomed young love receives a wonderful interpretation in Gounod’s opera, combining all of the drama of the well-known story and the emotional and stirring music typical of the composer of Faust. Not presented by The Royal Opera for a decade, Nicolas Joël’s production is revived with a fantastic cast conducted by French [...]
Continue reading...Saturday, July 17, 2010
There are plots and schemes below stairs, above stairs and behind closed doors! The wit and intrigue of Donizetti’s domestic comedy Don Pasquale gains added piquancy in the doll’s house set of Jonathan Miller’s acutely observed production. The quintessentially Italian Donizetti became a major figure in French opera repertory in his day, and Don Pasquale [...]
Continue reading...Saturday, July 17, 2010
The new Royal Opera Season begins with a great audience favourite -Cosi Fan Tutte. This great comedy with an edge brings a classic score by Mozart to a witty story of deception and trust tested to its limit. Can two apparently faithful couples have their affections altered by some apparently harmless deception? Jonathan Miller’s ever-popular [...]
Continue reading...Saturday, February 6, 2010
The O2 is set to host its first fully staged opera. Carmen, the world’s most popular opera, will take over The O2 in May 2010 for just three performances and follows on from highly successful and popular classical stagings of Carmina Burana, Andrea Bocelli and the forthcoming world premiere of Ben Hur Live at the [...]
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Sunday, September 4, 2011
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