Civil class war: Coriolanus, RSC
Coriolanus doesn’t often hit the modern stage: its plot, a hymn to the necessary evil of educated patrician privilege in order to provide for the politically fickle, unthinking plebeian multitude, doesn’t…
Here, too, are tears: Dido, Queen of Carthage, Marlowe, RSC
While there are many excellent reasons to read Virgil’s Aeneid from cover to cover, more than once, the fourth book of the great Roman epic (Dido’s abandonment by Aeneas and subsequent suicide)…
Treasure in store: A King’s Ransom, Into Opera
It all started with a tweet: in October 2011, Genevieve Raghu realised she had just missed Patrick Hawes’ concert in Norwich the previous week, and tweeted the composer to ask…
Beautiful dreams; The Pedlar of Swaffham, Alan Huckle
In Norfolk, we tend to be quietly, fondly proud of our surroundings – with an emphasis on ‘quietly.’ The tradition of Norfolk understatement is legendary, rivalled only by our keen…
Pick a side: Schutzwall at Tête à Tête
Although opera is traditionally associated with grand narrative structures, sometimes its heightened psychological intensity can be remarkably effective at drawing us into an intimate historical moment, and just keeping us…
Finders keepers: Belongings at Tête à Tête
We gather in a RADA basement to find two double rows of chairs facing one another across a long, thin central space; the layout faintly recalls a train carriage, the…
Love by design: ‘i’ – The Opera, The Waste Paper Opera Company
Not many operas credit their Neural Network Programming: but ‘i’ – The Opera, though recognisably and confidently an opera, thanks Janelle Shane and Dr Amita Kapoor of the University of…
Power hour: Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, The Hermes Experiment at Tête à Tête
The Winter’s Tale is surely one of Shakespeare’s cruellest tragedies: Leontes’ mistaken, yet unshakeable jealousy destroys family bonds and friendships alike, culminating in blasphemy as he refuses to accept the…
Divine passion: Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah, Grimeborn
Aylin Bozok’s productions of French opera for Grimeborn have all been marked by their elegance, restraint and psychological intensity. Bozok exchanges the orchestra for a piano accompaniment (played here with…
Packing all the punches: Edward Lambert’s The Art of Venus, Tête à Tête
“I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful…