The warrior Macbeth fights on the side of the King of Scotland – but when a coven of witches prophesy that he shall become king himself, a ruthless ambition drives Macbeth and his wife to horrific acts. Murder makes Macbeth king, and intrigue and butchery are the hallmarks of his brief, doomed reign. The witches make…
The young soldier Don José intends to marry Micaëla, a girl from his home village. But when he meets the sensual and fiercely independent Carmen, he sacrifices everything to be with her. Carmen grows bored of Don José and falls in love with Escamillo. Unable to bear her leaving him, Don José tracks Carmen down and…
Directed by John Fulljames, The Firework-Maker’s Daughter is a gently exotic and quietly magical act of storytelling, with a strong female hero, a vibrant score with strong, tuneful melodies from David Bruce played with relish by the CHROMA Ensemble, and plenty of visual interest contributed by skilful shadow puppetry from Indefinite Articles. Shapes and outlines inspired…
Half urban myth, half folklore, the mysterious disappearance of three lighthouse-keepers from the Flannan Isles one night in 1900 has never been satisfactorily explained. Theories abound; questions linger. As a child, I became obsessed by this mystery one summer, poring over maps and photographs (in the days before the internet) with no more success than…
King Size is an ultra-modern take on the German tradition of Liederabend, or the “evening of song”, mixing Schumann, Wagner and Schubert with the Jackson 5 and Stephen Sondheim. This production by noted European director Christoph Marthaler, originally from Theater Basel, is intriguing, but feels oddly rootless, moving from one understated, vaguely humourous situation to another…
From its stunningly filmic opening to its faux-Golgotha finale, the Royal Opera House’s new production of Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny demands our attention. We all know that money does not buy happiness; we also know society shows no mercy to those who cannot pay. But Brecht’s brutal reduction of human needs and…
Oksana Dyka sang at the 2005 inauguration of President Viktor Yushchenko (or so Wikipedia confidently assures me). Only two months afterwards, she would star in her very first Tosca. Nine years later, in a political maelstrom where power is wrenched from fist to fist daily, where religion cannot be a safe refuge, and where corruption may…
English Touring Opera take Tippett’s powerful pacifist retelling of Homer’s Iliad on tour in a strong, beautifully designed production, directed by James Conway, which will leave hearts and minds in turmoil. In our modern bunting-laden aftermath of the Queen’s Jubilee, the Royal Wedding and the Olympics, we seem to have almost forgotten that not everyone in Britain…
Simon Callow’s new show, part of the Deloitte Ignite Verdi/Wagner festival, curated by Stephen Fry, makes the strong and valid point that the reason some people hate Wagner so much is precisely because his art cuts so deeply into the human psyche, fearlessly confronting his anti-Semitism, his sexual voracity, his constant betrayals of those he…
A new opera creates a certain stir. And there’s a selfconscious ‘we’re here to be brutalised’ atmosphere among the audience: we think we’re tough enough for this, to watch Birtwistle and the beast go head to head in a battle of pain which will cleanse us, civilise us, bring us culture. The production’s central staging…