Posted on 14 April 2013 by Laura Peatman
Dispel all the stereotypes of stout sopranos warbling and stuffy, incomprehensible librettos: this is opera with its feet planted firmly in 2013. Dutch composer Michel van der Aa and novelist David Mitchell (of Cloud Atlas fame) have produced a work to show what opera can do, and what opera can be, in our world of [...]
Posted on 03 April 2013 by Daniel Harrison
Whilst I may never have heard the name Charles Castronovo before last night, the Italian-American tenor is famous in the world of opera, and so it is a real coup for the intimate King’s Head Theatre to be hosting Castronovo’s Dolce Napoli as an aside to his current performance in The Magic Flute at the [...]
Posted on 25 February 2013 by Amelia Forsbrook
Between the time Giuseppe Verdi debuted La Traviata in the mid nineteenth century and today, there have been enormous changes to opera audiences — and I’m not just talking about our oh-so-vulgar tendency to wear jeans. Since poor young Violetta first alternated delicate trills and sickly coughs back in 1853, we have, most importantly, forgotten [...]
Posted on 15 October 2012 by Sarah Milton
The English Touring Opera’s autumn 2012 season includes The Lighthouse, a story based on real events in the Orkney port of Stromness. A supply ship pulled in at a lighthouse to find the keepers had vanished, with no sign of disturbance. Davies’ imagination transports us through mysterious speculation as to what could have caused the [...]