Rossini’s Le Comte Ory is a flirtatious farce in which a naughty young Count drives everyone demented with his relentless erotic enthusiasms: and it glitters, musically and dramatically, with madcap Rossinian flair…
Against the backdrop of the Hanging Gardens, Semiramide, Queen of Babylon, defies bad omens and supernatural threats in her quest to find a worthy successor to her late husband. But…
Melly Still’s magical production of Janáček‘s The Cunning Little Vixen (revival, 2012) is back, the only opera I know to have been born from a comic strip. Still’s vision balances a…
Summer garden opera simply doesn’t get more glamourous than Garsington. The stunning lakeside setting at Wormsley, the Getty family’s oil-painting-perfect English retreat, sets off any picnic to perfection; there’s even…
Sharply styled in modern colours over a traditional 18th century setting, with some truly inspired lighting by Wayne Dowdeswell, Longborough ’s Barber of Seville does not seek to break the…
In this exuberant production at the Royal College of Music, directed by Donald Maxwell and Linda Ormiston and updated to Berlusconi’s Bunga Bunga Italy of the 1990s, Rossini’s comic opera…