New opera & honest marketing

Editorial

Without the long histories of Tristan und Isolde or La traviata, new operas need substance within the pages of the score in order to attract listeners. It's no longer enough to rely on the internal opera fan club, who get excited when folks like Plácido Domingo move from tenor to baritone roles, or when Peter Sellars gets his hands on a Bach oratorio; the people who care about these things are already putting their bums in seats.

In review: Tosca at ENO

Review

Performing Tosca in English is about on par with performing Peter Grimes in Italian, when you think about it. Like with all great operas, Puccini's music leaps from the ebbs and flows of the text; simply put, if the libretto had been different, there would be different tunes for us to hum post-show.

Opera for lunch: the ROH Young Artists in concert

Review

Safe as the programme may have been, the singers and pianists impressed; some of our highlights were the performances by tenor Thomas Atkins, sopranos Jennifer Davis and Vlada Borovko, and tenor David Junghoon Kim. The quality of singing was quite high across the board, and yet it's always a fascinating exercise to notice recurring differences between artists who are so-called "young," and those with more experience.

The kids are alright: youth-programmed music at the Southbank Centre

News

Festival Maker Layla, aged 17, says: "We've tried to incorporate young musicians into the programme: we’ve looked for young people who are already achieving, to make the point that this isn’t about young people tomorrow, it's about them today and what they are already doing."

In review: Nashville Symphony's season opener

Review

Lyric soprano Nicole Cabell and the Symphony Chorus joined the orchestra and Ms. DeYoung for the last movement – a section that searches for its identity (it’s all of us!) and produces wall after wall of orchestral and vocal sound. Ms. Cabell’s solid technical performance and effective interpretation were sometimes eaten by the orchestras’ fortissimo, but her glittering high notes rang out clear and sturdy. Hers are what high notes are supposed to sound like.

Fans unite: Opera Box Score

Editorial

So, for those well-balanced fans of opera and sports, there's Opera Box Score, the podcast that asks, "what if opera – its performances, personnel and programming – could be demystified, discussed and promoted in such a way as to become as much a part of the public consciousness as sports?"

In review: Don Giovanni at ENO

Review

So, it was a real moment of excitement to settle into the first minutes of Richard Jones's new production at English National Opera. His is a production that ingeniously straddles the line between the symbolic and the real; the characters are at once archetypes - the virgin, the scorned, the doting boyfriend - and specific people.

Don't miss: "Feet" at the Horniman Museum

Interview

"It was this juxtaposition, and the indignity of an animal losing its feet for a reason we would now consider to be quite minor, which formed the basis of the idea. Our main character, the pigeon (sorry, rock dove) just wants to tell her story and get a bit of attention for once."

In review: Jamie Barton leaves you wanting more

Review

I know I often talk about the immense amount of amazingly talented singers, but I want to go on record and say it applies to all musicians - and last night was proof positive of that. That being said, this was Mahler, so the night belonged to the brass.

Rehearsing trauma: How working on an opera helped me heal

It is not enough to re-experience our own pain on stage; we must externalize it so the audience can join us through empathy.