photograph by Bill Cooper Opera has caught the eye (rather than the ear) of the British people recently – and of the New York Times and Time Magazine – because several male colleagues of mine have been damned for their negative comments on the appearance of the mezzo singing the title role in Glyndebourne’s new production of Der Rosenkavalier. Some of them have found Tara Erraught’s body-type … [Read more...]

Of the Mozart/da Ponte operas, Così fan tutte was the least appreciated until fairly recent times. Some high-minded critics, such as the psychoanalyst, James Strachey (brother of the more famous Lytton), and also a musicologist who pronounced the composer’s name as Moz-ahr’, thought the plot a touch trivial. James Strachey wrote the original programme notes for the Glyndebourne productions of the … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="f0TMNb1q4C9PzhtZzp5fUEmBor0uWwc9"] A couple of days ago I sent a brief email to my MP about the Minister for Culture. My MP happens to be PM, the Prime Minister, David Cameron. I said that his Culture Minister Maria Miller, who'd been under attack for falsifying her expenses and for making only a perfunctory apology to the House of Commons when ordered to do so by a … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="gKYtCvM4cAQpsJxYekkWhiqX3TD4s6wQ"]   The English National Opera has a really big problem – or, rather, has given itself a big problem. It has decided to “refresh” its core repertory by commissioning a new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto. The rub is that the former staging wasn’t just any old Rigoletto, it was Jonathan Miller’s greatest of all Rigolettos, … [Read more...]