Talking with singers: Erwin Schrott

Interview

"Let's face it: if we had the chance to clone ourselves in a younger self and keep our memories or our soul…I wonder how many of us will take the chance immediately."

If you like Star Wars, you're gonna flip for opera: shouting into the void

Op-Ed

Maybe this is how it is for everyone that has a niche interest. Indie film lovers, college sports fans, lovers of obscure graphic novels - maybe they all bristle at the ubiquitous fandom of big-budget Hollywood movies, the NFL, DC Comics.

Talking with singers: Grace Davidson

Interview

"I have always felt that Baroque music is my natural habitat. I love working with historical instrumentalists, everything about their unique colour, tone and pitch feels comfortable for me and relates to the way I sing a line or phrase."

Talking with singers: Patrick Terry

Interview

"I wish I had started to save money earlier. I wish I had invested in travel containers for toiletries earlier, because I cannot tell you how many tiny shampoos I have accumulated over the years."

Talking with singers: Soraya Mafi

Interview

"I often take for granted how lucky we are to have access to such wonderful music and music-makers in London. The rich history of classical music in London has enabled musicians to take advantage of world-class composers, conductors, teachers and venues."

An American Dream: an opera that hits home

Review

With music by Jack Perla and libretto by Jessica Murphy Moo, An American Dream spotlights the lives of two families against the backdrop of Japanese internment by the U.S. government following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Appropriately strange: Frida at FGO

Review

Frida Kahlo was Mexican, an artist, a woman, disabled, queer, Communist. Though the pacing of the opera was choppy and piecemeal, resembling a biopic in its sweeping depiction of her teenage romance, her life-altering bus accident, her revolutionary politics, and her turbulent marriage, the format was well suited to highlight the many intersecting facets of Kahlo's complex and richly lived biography.

Overstaying its welcome: WNO's Faust

Review

It doesn't help that Gounod's setting is about as dusty as operas get, focusing more on the downfall (and ultimate redemption in death, of course) of Marguerite, than on Faust's own psychological struggle, this opera always comes off like a parody of a 19th-century morality play, which was only emphasized by Staley's design which could have been pulled straight out of a European theater from 150 years ago.

Greater than the sum of its parts: Sarah Connolly at Wigmore Hall

Review

Connolly, whose prolific contribution to classical performance over the course of her career - a career that has now made her a household name - garnered palpable excitement from the audience from the moment she walked on stage. She carries a sense of poise and authority as a performer, yet showed great vulnerability.

Talking with singers: Jacquelyn Stucker

Interview

"Handel wrote this role for castrato Gioacchino Conti, who was, by all accounts that I read, a complete freak of nature: he could allegedly sing high Cs (as in, C6), and while he preferred to sing roles with more lyrical material, he was known to be equally virtuosic in how he executed coloratura."