There is no more remote place on earth than Cape Town to experience opera. At the juncture of two vast Oceans and over 8,000 km south of the nearest opera…
Proms 2025: East and West collide with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Making unusual connections is one of the hallmarks of the BBC Proms. Honouring Sofia Gubaidulina, who died aged 93 in March, this concert opened with the sound of soft tubular…
Proms 2025: Joe Hisaishi and Steve Reich
Duck-quacking effects aside (in the opening work, The Boy and the Heron), this was a dark concert. Both Joe Hisaishi’s The End of the World and Steve Reich’s The Desert…
Proms 2025: Stupendous Mahler 3 from the Royal Albert Hall
It’s hard to believe live performances of Mahler’s Third Symphony – the longest symphony in the standard repertoire – only began life in the UK in 1961 when a performance…
Pocket-sized Wagner: Grimeborn Opera’s Tristan und Isolde
Much has been written about Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and for various reasons. It is one of the most compelling love stories of all time, with roots stretching back to…
Mango Street Under Construction at Glimmerglass
For its landmark Fiftieth Anniversary Season, the Glimmerglass Festival is to be heartily commended for commissioning a bold new work, The House on Mango Street, by composer Derek Bermel, who also…
Proms 2025: Aigul Akhmetshina soars in Ravel’s Shéhérazade
In its single contribution to this year’s promenade concerts, the London Philharmonic Orchestra took us to exotic and faraway regions, as far from the Albert Hall as one could imagine.…
Revolutionary Rake at Glimmerglass
If you were expecting a Hogarth-pretty version of Igor Stravinsky, W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman’s The Rake’s Progress at the renowned Glimmerglass Festival, you were at the wrong address. For…
Vintage Sondheim in Upstate New York
For its annual American musical presentation, Glimmerglass Festival lovingly staged a scintillating production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George. It is hard to believe…
Glimmerglass Tosca: A Daring Leap
To open its Fiftieth Anniversary Season, Glimmerglass Festival opted for a reliable potboiler, Puccini’s Tosca, but with a contemporary twist. Rather than setting it in its scripted time period of…