Features Index
by Barry Creasy
The Barbican’s multi-arts 2017-18 season is entitled ‘The Art of Change’. It is a response to last year’s Brexit vote, and the UK’s seeming shift…
Situated near Winchfield, West Green House Opera is a wonderful enigma. Small by the standards of many summer opera venues, there is actually much to...
Glyndebourne, Garsington and the various Granges are hardly major treks from the capital, but in terms of accessible summer opera for the average Londoner nothing...
Oliver Mears’ first season and Antonio Pappano’s sixteenth at the Royal Opera House looks like a safe mixture of the new and not so new,...
Booking opens today for the extended 2017 season at Garsington Opera at Wormsley, and if you haven’t yet experienced this idyllic place and its always-...
Longborough Festival Opera occupies a special place in the summer opera calendar. Nestled in the Gloucestershire Countryside, with glorious views over the Cotswolds, it is...
Public booking opens on Sunday for the 2017 Festival, with three new offerings this year, plus three revivals of past successes. The major draws are...
The 2016 Glyndebourne Tour starts in just two weeks’ time, beginning with a new production of Madama Butterfly at Glyndebourne itself on October 14th. The...
Every year when the Proms schedule is released in April there seem to be cries of excitement and expressions of disappointment in almost equal measure....
The Australian mezzo-soprano Caitlin Hulcup has been making quite a name for herself in some of the most prestigious opera houses around the world, and...
Although West Green House Opera is now in its seventeenth season, it still feels like a new discovery. No matter how often one visits, it...
With Martin and Lizzie Graham’s 500-seater opera house standing in the Gloucestershire Countryside, Longborough Festival Opera is well known for providing high quality productions in...
With the return of Haydn, Wagner and Bruckner, the retention of Beethoven and Mahler, a healthy dose of opera and some notable innovations concerning performance...
You can’t please everyone, and as usual the new season announcement brought its mixture of pleasure and pain; the former came from the retention of...
While one of the joys of going to see a summer opera at Glyndebourne, Garsington, Grange Park or West Green House is the act of...
“He’s either quite brilliant or mad” Thus said Violet Carson in 1950 of the young Peter Maxwell Davies, following his submission of an early composition...
On February 25th, Glyndebourne Opera stages the premiere of Nothing, a new opera by David Bruce, the composer of The Firework Maker’s Daughter. It’s based...
The Southbank Centre’s Artistic Director, Jude Kelly, declares that “everyone should have access to classical music,” and the centre’s commitment to this is shown by...
For lovers of ‘country house opera’ there have been few more eagerly anticipated experiences than that offered by Grange Park Opera: wobbling down that rutted,...
On October 10th, Glyndebourne begins its season of touring operas, with three productions which will be taken from the main house on to Canterbury, Norwich,...
As this season’s BBC Proms came to a close, it seemed that a retrospective look at them was in order – some thoughts on the...
Doves @ Somerset House, London
Don Giovanni @ Longborough Festival Opera, Longborough
The Final Fling with Simon Keenlyside and Jazz Friends @ Grange Park Opera, West Horsley
Q&A: Africa Express – Moonchild Sanelly, Muzi and Poté on new album EGOLI
Africa Express – EGOLI
The Soft Cavalry – The Soft Cavalry
Jónsi & Alex Somers: Riceboy Sleeps @ Barbican, London