Grimeborn are following up their fantastic 2019 Das Rheingold (see my previous review) with Die Walküre this year. Moving to the gorgeous Hackney Empire, with the Orpheus Sinfonia comfortably ensconced in the pit, this production…
The Arts are steadily moving east in London. Nicholas Hytner is launching his new 900-seat theatre at Tower Bridge this autumn: it’s been 80 years since London theatre received such…
“A Ring Cycle set in a launderette? Well, I’ve seen weirder productions…” Unexpected Opera’s approachable and slick reduction of Wagner’s epic starts on a characteristically unstuffy note, and proceeds to…
It’s hard to get more hipster than an immersive opera installation in an abandoned house in Peckham. workshOPERA’s Seven Velvet Suits is part of BasicSpace, a new arts festival offering six…
Wagner declared in his 1851 pamphlet Communication to my Friends that “the Flying Dutchman… gives emotionally compelling expression to… the longing for peace from the storms of life.” And Daisy Evans takes this…
Composer Tim Benjamin gives us a masterclass in how to create a one-handed opera twice over in his Life Stories. Rest in Peace, inspired by a short story from Chekhov (Life…
Psyche – Alex Groves Psyche asks us to get up close and personal with opera (alone, barefoot and blindfolded) for ten minutes, and the results are, to me, spine-tingling. On…
Njogel opens with spectacular beauty, with a small wooden ship bobbing up and down along a ship’s boom, its furled sail representing the waves of the sea around the Shetland…
A stylised and intense form of high drama, Japanese Noh is undoubtedly as well suited to operatic treatment as Greek tragedy. Powerful emotions, violent actions and brutal social strictures abound…
None of our Royals’ chaotic personal arrangements have been so constitutionally cataclysmic as Edward VIII’s passion for Wallis Simpson. Britain’s flag-waving fervour during the Royal Wedding, the Jubilee and the…