Interviews, Reviews & Commentary

June 2024 / Articles

A born opera composer

February 2024 / Reviews

La Bohème

Mimì died with pain-free elegance in this revival of the Royal Opera’s La Bohème. Angela Gheorghiu languished gracefully until, on cue, the muff fell from her fingers and she was gone.

April 2023 / Reviews

Cairo Opera Company Gala

The 30 singers that constitute the Cairo Opera Company take the stage in most of the operas performed here, alongside guest singers, who appear in many main roles. This, however, was not the case with the performances that took place on three consecutive evenings in March (7 to 9). Under the title ‘Excerpts from Famous Operas’, the evening featured 15 Egyptian singers performing arias from Die Zauberflöte and Il trovatore and the first act of Tosca.

October 2024 / Articles

KEEP ON MOVING

Beethoven’s Fidelio, which opens Washington National Opera’s 2024-5 season, has significance for Francesca Zambello, the company’s artistic director.

September 2024 / Articles

Bringing ‘Jubilee’ to opera

September 2023 / News, Press

Opera with Opera News

June 2023 / Articles

Cancellation: an account

Can there be a more polarizing name in the current world of opera than that of Anna Netrebko?

February 2023 / Articles, News

THROUGH AFGHAN EYES

THE CREATORS OF ‘A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS’ TALK TO JESSICA DUCHEN

February 2023 / People

Elizabeth Llewellyn

Llewellyn sings the title role in Opera North’s new ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’ this month – interview by Erica Jeal

January 2023 / Reviews

Son of Cornwall

This film about the Cornish Heldentenor John Treleaven—born John Richards—is a family affair.

November 2022 / News, Press

John Allison – Opera Awards

November 2022 / News, Press

Opera Awards Winners 2022

November 2022 / News, Reviews

Sycorax

Visually compelling with its stage full of post-apocalyptic silver tubular entrails and abandoned aircraft seats submerged under garbage, swathed occasionally in drifts of atmospheric white smoke, this production of Sycorax, Georg Friedrich Haas’s new work, is stark and stunning

October 2022 / News

International Opera Awards 2022

The International Opera Awards 2022- Shortlist. Ceremony to be held at Teatro Real in Madrid on November 28

September 2022 / Reviews

John Adams’s new opera Antony and Cleopatra

In a telling, vividly realized scene in Act 2 of John Adams’s new opera Antony and Cleopatra, Caesar (the transfixing tenor Paul Appleby) unleashes a mighty polemic to a rabid Roman throng.

April 2022 / News, Reviews

The Handmaid’s Tale

On April 7, on the eve of the opening night of The Handmaid’s Tale, a young woman in Starr County, Texas, was arrested and charged with murder after she ‘intentionally and knowingly caused the death of an individual by self-induced abortion’.

April 2022 / Articles

One eye wet and one eye dry 

Great singers in great roles: Felicity Lott talks to Jon Tolansky about the Marschallin

February 2022 / Articles

SUPERCHARGING THE SCORE

A PANEL OF LEADING CHOREOGRAPHER-DIRECTORS DISCUSS HOW DANCE AND OPERA ARE INTERRELATED

December 2021 / Articles

Unsecret agents

As the pandemic changes course again, a group of artist managers explain the effect it is having on their industry

November 2021 / People

Bernard Haitink, 1929-2021

The death of the great conductor Bernard Haitink on 21 October 2021 represented — in many different ways — the end of an era

September 2021 / Reviews

Jenufa

Covent Garden had been holding its collective breath since the originally scheduled first night of this new production in March 2020 became one of the first casualties of the pandemic shutdown.

October 2020 / Reviews

The Fairies, Gharachedaghi

The days when opera thrived in Iran…By Christopher Ballantine, Opera November 2020

September 2020 / Articles, News

The cost of singing

How many of us sitting motionless and mesmerized in a darkened auditorium spare a thought for the circumstances of the singers whose voices we relish intensely but whose labours we often criticize so wantonly?

May 2020 / Articles

Seeing Double

In the first of a series of Beethoven-inspired articles, John Allison finds parallels between the composer and Goya.

May 2020 / News

Opera Magazine Launches New Website

April 2020 / Articles

Opera In The Time Of Covid

Michael Chance talks to John Allison

March 2020 / Articles

Orpheus In Opera

Christopher Webber follows the Orpheus myth through opera

February 2020 / People

Mirella Freni, 1935-2020

Stephen Hastings pays tribute to the great soprano

December 2019 / People

Barbara Hannigan

By Andrew Clements

March 2018 / Articles

Nibelung treasure

Jerrold Northrop Moore on an unrecognized source for Wagner’s ‘Ring’

December 2017 / Articles

The Italian coach Matteo Dalle Fratte talks to Henrietta Bredin

November 2017 / Articles

Dima Undimmed

Richard Fairman pays tribute to Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

July 2016 / People

Oleg Caetani

By Andrew Clark / Caetani returns to ENO to conduct Madam Butterfly this month

June 2016 / Articles

The New Philanthropy

Yehuda Shapiro on the FEDORA prizes

May 2016 / People

Zubin Mehta

Zubin Mehta talks to John Allison

April 2016 / People

Douglas Boyd – Working the magic

Garsington Opera’s Douglas Boyd talks to Fiona Maddocks

October 2015 / Reviews

Bayreuth: Tristan und Isolde

After the disappointments of recent seasons the Bayreuth Festival urgently needed to have a success / By Richard Fairman

October 2015 / People

Kristīne Opolais

Opolais sings Margherita in Boito\’s ‘Mefistofele\’ in Munich this month

September 2015 / Articles

Opera’s Poet of Nostalgia

Jack Sullivan explores the operatic life of Frederick Delius

August 2015 / Articles

Endless Pleasure?

Jonathan Keates on the staging of Handel’s oratorios

July 2015 / People

Jon Vickers, 1926-2015

Heather Harper and Rupert Christiansen

July 2015 / Articles

Too Hot for the Bolshoy

It might seem a bit of an exaggeration to claim that a single review could change the course of musical history…

May 2015 / Articles

Der ‘Jahrhundertsänger’

John Warrack pays tribute to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

May 2015 / Reviews

Zurich: Juliette

By John Allison

May 2015 / Articles

Guilty Pleasure

William Bolcom discusses Milhaud with George Loomis (from May 2015)

May 2015 / People

Michael Fabiano

Fabiano sings the title role in Glyndebourne’s ‘Poliuto’ this month (from May 2015)

May 2015 / Articles

Rarity Value

Yehuda Shapiro reflects on recent repertoire trends

April 2015 / Reviews

Bryan Hymel: Héroïque

French scenes and arias for tenor / By David Shengold

April 2015 / Articles

Twilight of the tickets

Robert Turnbull investigates upheaval at Wagner societies worldwide

April 2015 / Articles

Living Opera

Fort Worth Opera’s Darren K. Woods on setting a new festival agenda

March 2015 / People

Andrew Porter, 1928-2015

By Max Loppert

March 2015 / Reviews

Berg: Lulu (DVD Review)

Despite Krzysztof Warlikowski’s quirky production, this Lulu is irresistible because of Barbara Hannigan’s performance of the title role

February 2015 / Articles

English International

John Berry talks to John Allison about ENO\’s co-production policy

January 2015 / People

Camilla Tilling

By Hugh Canning

January 2015 / Articles

That Broadway Sound

Roger Pines looks at how vocalism in musical theatre has evolved over the decades

November 2014 / Articles

Karita Mattila’s first Emilia Marty

A burst of star power dominated SAN FRANCISCO OPERA’S final fall production. On November 10 Karita Mattila met Emilia Marty for the first time in her career in a new production of Janáèek’s Makropoulos Case…

March 2014 / People

The Enigmatic Idealist

Andrew Clark looks back on the life of Claudio Abbado, who died at his home in Bologna on January 20 at the age of 80

February 2014 / People

Carmen Giannattasio

The soprano makes her Met debut this month as Leonora in ‘Il trovatore’

January 2014 / People

Dolora Zajick

The mezzo sings Ulrica this month in the Met’s new ‘Ballo in maschera’ / By Martin Bernheimer

November 2013 / Articles

Toulouse

Encapsulating all the creative differences that were soon to terminate the Brecht-Weill collaboration, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny is a work that positively invites directors and conductors to take different aesthetic sides.

May 2013 / Articles

The Shock of The New

Richard Fairman revisits Charles Mackerras’s thoughts on the premiere of ‘Don Giovanni’

March 2013 / People

Christian Thielemann

Thielemann conducts Parsifal at his first Salzburg Easter Festival in March

December 2012 / Articles

A Princess Comes Home

Ken Smith explores how ‘Turandot’ became China’s national opera.

October 2012 / Articles

An imperfect Wagnerite

Rodney Milnes on a stormy on-off love affair.

September 2012 / Articles

Alla Polacca

Polish music has probably never been better represented around the world, and yet sadly it is still true to say that most music-lovers would be hard pressed to name more than half a dozen Polish composers and almost certainly no one earlier than Chop

July 2012 / Articles, People

Ildar Abdrazakov

To be young, good-looking and the owner of a fabulous bass voice is a cruel twist of fate. Composers have rarely favoured low voices for their heroes and lovers.

July 2012 / People

Mariusz Kwiecien

One night in the mid 1990s, the regulars at Manhattan’s Caffé Taci—a restaurant featuring classical singing—were joined by a handsome young baritone who delivered a sterling account of Aleko’s aria…

February 2012 / People

Rita Gorr, 1926-2012

Rita Gorr, who died in the Spanish Costa Brava town of Denia (where for several years she had made her home) on January 22, less than a month before her 86th birthday…

September 2011 / People

Salvatore Licitra, 1968-2011

The early death (in Catania, on September 5) of Salvatore Licitra has robbed the opera world of one of the best-loved tenors of the post-Pavarotti generation.

September 2011 / Articles

Sparkle restored

George Loomis sees Ruslan and Lyudmila in Moscow’s renovated Bolshoy Theatre

July 2011 / Articles

Rolando Villazón in Lyon

By Hugh Canning

July 2011 / Articles

Liszt & the Opera: Arbiter of Taste

In Liszt’s bicentenary year, Tim Ashley examines the composer\’s relationship with opera…