Always there is the claim that opera directors need to “breathe new life” into classic works through updatings and reinterpretations. But as the last 50 years of such events have shown, the life ...

2 Review: JETTE PARKER ARTISTS: TALES OF LOVE AND LOSS, Royal Ballet And Opera 3 Review: SAMSON ET DALILA, Royal Ballet And Opera Exciting historical performance ensemble Figure will bring a fresh and ...

2 OH, MARY! Reveals Tour Dates and Cities For 2026-27 3 OPERATION MINCEMEAT Reveals 2026-27 Tour Dates and Cities Rare as it is to hear Handel's opera "Serse" at all - it was scarcely performed at all ...

Let’s talk about adapting opera. I have no problem with a director deciding to abridge a Shakespeare play for performance, or even to modernize its language. I also have no problem when cuts are made ...

Fagioli, though, is something else again. The full-spectrum tantrum of his final aria (“Crude furie degli 'orridi abissi”) became a quite spectacular hissy-fit. It climbed in a trice from ...

An opera that starts with a monarch’s love song to a tree might suggest something Monty Python-esque, but it makes perfect sense (well, maybe not quite perfect) in Handel’s Serse, which combines ...

In perhaps the most delightful opening aria in all opera, Serse, the Greek king Xerxes, sings a wondrously beautiful love song to a tree -- “Ombra mai fu.” And the Serse of this irresistible recording ...

While the two sopranos were of similar vivacious ilk – Mary Bevan’s Atalanta (pictured below with Harry Bicket at the harpsichord, superb cellist Joseph Crouch and star theorbist Sergio Bucheli to the ...

Think of the graceful melody known as Handel’s Largo, from the composer’s 1738 opera Serse (Xerxes). This is music calculated to melt the heart, with its stately descending phrase — “Ombra mai fu” — ...