The use of a narrative, discursive or argumentative strategy based upon making animals speak is almost as ancient as culture itself. From Aesop to Disney, passing through La Fontaine and Orwell, the device of granting human language to animals has been employed in various ways and for various purposes, yet almost always with an educational aim - education meant in its broadest sense. In one way or another, we are all children of Disney. How many childhood tears, crucial to our emotional...

            It is always a bit sad when the curtain goes up in front of an half empty opera house. There is of course the awfully cold February New York weather, no to mention the particularly unpopular Michael Grandage’s production – a large number of critics have described it as not daring enough and boring – that premiered here at the Met in 2011. One could think the cast should be helping: Petter Mattei as Don...

La Scala’s season opening every 7 December is always a major event, but this year the excitement is especially high as it marks Daniel Barenboim’s farewell to this theatre to which he gave his all. And we must first of all admire his performance: his conducting, ample, powerful and taut without any superfluous showmanship, perfectly sums up the spirt of Beethoven's only opera, the morality of an upright man stated in clear and radiant sound by a constantly renewed dynamic,...