September 2023

Our front cover this month shows the composer Jake Heggie, profiled by Rebecca Paller before new productions of his operas Dead Man Walking at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and Intelligence at Houston Grand Opera.

Other features include:

Nicholas Payne argues for a reassessment of the character of Alberich, the Nibelung of the title of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung.

English Touring Opera’s new general director, Robin Norton-Hale, in conversation with Alexandra Coghlan ahead of the company’s autumn season at the Hackney Empire.

Sándor Kónya, the great Hungarian tenor, sang as a prisoner of war in the 1940s and went on to become a great favourite with audiences worldwide, taking on numerous roles, in Berlin and Hamburg, Milan and Munich, New York and San Francisco. Wolfgang Denker looks back at his career.

A youthful Christopher Webber spent his own money on purchasing his first boxed set recording—Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage—and it remains a favourite today.

Reviews include Itch and La Bohème at Opera Holland Park, Semele at Glyndebourne, The Queen of Spades at the Grange Festival, Das Rheingold in Atlanta, Don Giovanni in Alexandria, Rusalka in Milan, Orphée aux Enfers in the Hague, Orestes in Erfurt, La Fille du régiment in Turin, Orestes in Erfurt, Carmen in Dushanbe, Idomeneo in Melbourne, Le Prophète, Wozzeck, Così fan tutte and Picture a Day Like This in Aix-en-Provence.

Our disc of the month is Carl Orff’s Prometheus, with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rafael Kubelík and featuring Colette Lorand, Roland Hermann, Fritz Uhl, Kieth Engen, Heinz Cramer and Josef Greindl.