Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, with a libretto by Bertolt Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann, describes the establishing and subsequent implosion of a city that is designed to give people fun because, it is asserted, there is nothing else in the world on which to rely. Situated somewhere in America, it is initially founded by three fugitives (Leokadja Begbick, Fatty the Bookkeeper and Trinity Moses) who find themselves unable to flee any further from the pursuing...

Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life of 1946, itself based on Philip Van Doren Stern’s short story The Greatest Gift (self-published in 1943), is one of the all time classic Christmas films. It sees George Bailey, played by James Stewart, grow up in the first half of the twentieth century in an American town named Bedford Falls. George has ambitions to go to college and see the world, but at every point in his life he is held back by circumstances and a sense of...

Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème of 1896, with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world today. Originally set in 1830s Paris, it focuses on six young adults and the love that four of them find with each other amidst the most impoverished of circumstances. One couple (Marcello and Musetta) have a stormy relationship but their frequent battles prove that their love actually has staying power. Rodolfo and Mimì,...

This year's opening production of the highly regarded Glyndebourne opera festival is Rossini's well beloved masterpiece of Barbiere di Siviglia. Annabel Arden was already responsible for several productions in Glyndebourne and returns with a rather traditional mediterranean setting, involving most lively action rather on the edge of exaggeration. There is sufficient wit and comic in the splendid original libretto and music of this opera buffo, so there is no need for...