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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]