Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is something of an operatic oddity. It describes the establishing and subsequent implosion of a city that is designed to give people fun because, as its founders assert, there is nothing else in the world to rely on. Weill and librettist Bertolt Brecht were writing predominantly about the world they saw around them in 1930, but their depiction of Mahagonny, and by extension society in general, feel highly relevant today. They...

Hot on the heels of the triumphant new production of Andrea Chenier with the A team of Pappano / Kaufmann, comes this revival of Tim Albery's 2009 Fliegende Holländer with a similar top level pairing of Nelsons / Terfel. After some less than iconic first nights in the house, it was not just a delight but a relief to be able to say with confidence, twice within a couple of weeks, that this is what one of the world's great lyric theatres is all about. From the opening...