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An Intense and Engaging Production of The Handmaid’s Tale at t...

Sam Smith

Written in 1998 to a libretto by Paul Bentley, Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale is based on Margaret Atwood’s eponymous novel of 1985. This means that when he wrote it no-one had even heard of Bruce Miller’s television series that aired in 2017. English National Opera first staged the work in 2003, and then introduced a new production by ENO’s Artistic Director Annilese Miskimmon in 2022. This version has now returned, under revival director James...


Christof Loy’s New and Nuanced Production of Elektra at the Ro...

Sam Smith

Based on the Sophocles tragedy, Richard Strauss’s Elektra of 1909 represents the first of his several collaborations with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who in this instance had already written an eponymous play. It is the second of Strauss’s two highly modernist operas, and deploys dissonance, chromaticism and extremely fluid tonality to an even greater degree than his first, Salome.  The opera is expressionistic in every sense since the adaptation of the...


Calixto Bieito’s Old Carmen Still Full of Strength at the Gran...

Xavier Pujol

The Liceu has opened the year with a revival that is also a birthday party. In 1999, the Peralada Festival commissioned Calixto Bieito to stage direct a new production of Carmen. In 2010 and 2015 this Carmen, which has travelled to more than 70 theatres around the world, could be seen at Liceu. Now, on the 25th anniversary of the premiere, it has returned once again to the Barcelona stage. Carmen was the title that placed Bieito's name in the international panorama of opera...


Hansel and Gretel Provides a Festive Treat at the Royal Opera ...

Sam Smith

Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, with a libretto by his sister Adelheid Wette, is based on the eponymous fairytale that was recorded by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812. It follows the Grimm version of the story reasonably closely, although there are a few notable differences including the fact that the Mother here is not intent on losing the children in the forest so that she and her husband might survive the hard times. She sends them there to collect berries as a...


Good Old Turandot Triumphs Again

Xavier Pujol

For an opera production, 25 years is an almost venerable age. Few manage to reach it. On the eve of the year in which the centenary of Puccini's death will be commemorated on the one hand, and on the other, the 25th anniversary of the reopening of the theatre after the fire that destroyed it in 1994, the Liceu has once again revived the production of Turandot with which it reopened in 1999 and which had already been remade in 2005 and 2009. Ezio Frigerio (deceased in 2022) designed...


Oliver Mears’s New Production of Jephtha at the Royal Opera Ho...

Sam Smith

Composed in 1751, Handel’s Jephtha is based on the story from Judges XI and George Buchanan’s 1554 play Jephthes, sive Votum. It sees the Israelite Jephtha triumph in battle over the Ammonites, but then face the most dreadful situation. This is because he had vowed that if he were victorious he would sacrifice the first living creature he saw on his return, and this turns out to be his daughter Iphis. To make the work acceptable to an eighteenth century audience,...


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