Fighting for freedom: Káťa Kabanova
The story Another claustrophobic family in a claustrophobic village, and another opera about women - strong, scary women and vulnerable,...
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Nov 65 min read
Janáček’s breakthrough: Jenůfa
Jenůfa was the first of a set of powerful operas that drove Janáček's reputation internationally, and the first of his great operas...
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Oct 274 min read
To the Moon and back with Brouček
In Janáček’s words, Brouček is 'just an ordinary man; he swears at the world and spends his life with a jug of beer in his hand. There is...
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Oct 236 min read
Finding Janáček
Leoš Janáček , like his operas, is an enigma, a tangle of contradictions and complicated relationships, light and dark, sometimes very...
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Sep 195 min read
Best of all possible worlds
Candide is an operetta, arguably the last of the line - witty and gritty, theatrical, fastmoving (and dancing) and wonderfully,...
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Sep 114 min read
The Mother of all Musicals
The end of the romantic operettas in America came, it's generally agreed, with Showboat . It took the step up from simple romantic plots...
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Sep 43 min read
Gaudeamus Igitur!
The Student Prince is all about (privileged young men) rejoicing while they're young. "Gaudeamus igitur?" Nothing there about learning! ...
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Aug 283 min read
Ah! Sweet mystery of life
"Naughty Marietta" declared love, of course, as the mystery of life. But this truth is revealed in a plot that rivals most operas for...
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Aug 205 min read
Hear the music play!
"The Merry Widow" was the toast of the new century when the operetta premiered in Vienna on 30 December 1905. It's still undoubtedly the...
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Aug 143 min read
Operetta crosses the ditch
Thespis , Gilbert and Sullivan's first partnership operetta hit London in 1871. It was a less than complete effort and it's become more...
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Aug 84 min read
Bats in the Opera House
Die Fledermaus premiered in Vienna in 1874, in the year Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld hit Paris. Both were clearly operettas,...
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Jul 314 min read
Mockery by Operetta
Orpheus in the Underworld, by Offenbach, is usually called the first operetta - and it remains the only one to spoof both a Greek myth...
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Jun 262 min read
O for Operettas!
Winter warmers needed! What will the Opera Group do in winter term? What to view when it's too cold for sitting still for long, too dark...
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Jun 196 min read
Grand Verdi
"Most opera is grand, but not all operas are grand operas." Thus we move from Puccini and Adams to the grandest of the grand master,...
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Jun 58 min read
American Faust?
Countdown, to the world's annihilation? John Adams created an opera from a true story and the massive moral crisis of the scientist in...
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May 285 min read
An opera for our time
“Girls of the Golden West,” titled to play on Puccini's opera, couldn't be more different. Here's a contrast that takes us not only to...
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May 225 min read
Puccini’s symphonic Western
From the Romantic East to the Wild West - where else would Puccini go, after M. Butterfly? And he made the leap via another play by the...
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May 155 min read
Challenging the clichés?
Madama Butterfly is a problem for opera houses today, despite its immense and enduring popularity. How to handle this "nasty story about...
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May 83 min read
One fine day...
Beautiful music, for a shocking story. There’s a theme through Puccini’s operas of misuse of women, especially powerless women. But...
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Mar 185 min read
A Simple Love Story?
Puccini said his success lay in depicting "great sorrows in little souls." But this much quoted phrase oversimplifies his version of...
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