Saioa Hernández has found in the character of Gioconda the role upon which she is building a significant part of her career. She was the most eagerly awaited singer in this new production of La Gioconda, which has just opened at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, and this marks the sixth different staging of Amilcare Ponchielli’s opera in which the Madrid-born soprano has taken part. That is no small achievement, given that the work, though not a rarity, is performed relatively...

Il Trovatore, the opera that is supposed to be performed in A night at the opera (1935), the immortal Marx brothers film, has always been called in modern - and not so modern - times a surviving opera in the repertoire thanks to its musical excellence despite its deliriously absurd and exaggerated plot. In this sense, its companions in the 'popular Verdian trilogy', Rigoletto and Traviata, benefit from supposedly higher quality arguments. That is not true, Il Trovatore,...