Nadine Sierra Heads an Outstanding Cast in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Royal Opera House

Opening night of Salome proved to be the first night of the Royal Opera’s 2022/23 season, although this was not by design. Don Giovanni was to have opened it the preceding evening, but the sad news of the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II saw the performance cancelled as a mark of respect. Twenty-four hours later Salome did go ahead, preceded by a tribute led by Director of Opera Oliver Mears, a minute’s silence and the playing of the National Anthem by the Orchestra of...

It tends to be the case, at least at Liceu, that in premiere nights musically the performances start off being a little wobbly and, sometimes, with luck they end well. Norma, the last opera for this season, wasn’t an exception. At the beginning there were many issues in all musical areas, but it ended reasonably well. The problem lies in the fact that in Norma the best musical numbers, the shiny ones, are located at the start of the piece and we couldn’t enjoy them...

Like the Shakespeare play upon which it is based, Giuseppe Verdi’s penultimate opera Otello of 1887, with a libretto by Arrigo Boito, is the story of a general in the Venetian military whose skills in managing political and personal affairs do not match those he has demonstrated in fighting. When his ensign Iago feels Otello has sidelined him for promotion, he lays a trap to make Otello believe his wife Desdemona has been unfaithful, and the general falls whole-heartedly...

The standard operatic repertoire is full of examples of sexual and physical violence towards women. That is a fact that cannot be dismissed lightly on the grounds that most of the pieces were written a hundred or more years ago, since even today one in five women have been raped or sexually assaulted as an adult. As a result, there is still something troubling about violent acts being sensationalised and used to create moments of high drama on stage, when in reality they leave behind real...

Although Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci are entirely separate operas, they are so frequently performed together that ‘Cav and Pag’ is now a standard phrase in the operatic world. In some ways it is easy to see why it has become a tradition to pair the two. Written only two years apart, in 1890 and 1892 respectively, their short running times mean they can comfortably fit into one evening, and together they seem to...

Così fan tutte of 1790 is the third and final opera (after Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni) on which Mozart collaborated with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. Originally set in Naples, it sees the philosopher Don Alfonso challenge two soldiers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, to prove that their respective fiancées, the sisters Dorabella and Fiordiligi, are faithful. He is certain that no woman ever is, but the younger men are so convinced of their own lovers’...