Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata of 1853 is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world today, and the Royal Opera has been putting a special focus on the work in its 2021/22 season. By the end of this month no less than six different singers will have taken on the main role with Lisette Oropesa, Kristina Mkhitaryan and Anush Hovhannisyan having sung it across a dozen performances last autumn. The opera now returns for thirteen outings in April 2022, as well as a live cinema...

Premiering in 1945, with a libretto adapted by Montagu Slater from George Crabbe’s eponymous narrative poem, Peter Grimes focuses on the type of outsider figure that always fascinated Benjamin Britten. Set in a nineteenth century Suffolk coastal village referred to simply as ‘the borough’, it focuses on the clash between Grimes, a hard working fisherman who dreams of wealth and respect, and a narrow-minded and repressive community who will never judge him kindly,...

Some productions are tremendous on their first outing and never quite manage to recapture the same brilliance in subsequent revivals. Others discover that they need an initial outing before they find their feet, and the Royal Opera’s Rigoletto, from its Director of Opera Oliver Mears, would seem to fall into this latter category. It first appeared last September, but, aided by an outstanding cast, its first revival feels leaner and meaner in a great many ways. The good news is that...

Although better known today for his concertos, in his own lifetime Antonio Vivaldi was just as famous for his operas. He claimed to have written ninety-four, and while it is impossible to prove he ever composed quite so many, we do know of at least thirty-two. Bajazet of 1735 is one of these although strictly it is a pasticcio, which is a work built around music (usually from a range of composers) that by and large already exists. In this instance, it seems that Vivaldi...

Handel’s oratorio Theodora is unusual among his compositions in that it has created more of a splash in the modern day than it ever did during his lifetime. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden on 16 March 1750 but ran for just three performances and was only revived once in 1755. Although the fact there had been an earthquake a week before the premiere meant that some of the composer’s usual patrons had fled the city, the real reason for the work’s...

The Marriage of Figaro of 1786 is one of three operas on which Mozart collaborated with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (the others being Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte). It is based on the second of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’ trilogy of Figaro plays, while the first was later to be immortalised by Rossini in The Barber of Seville. It centres on the day on which Figaro, valet to Count Almaviva, tries to wed Susanna, maid to the...