English National Opera’s Powerful Production of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking at the London Coliseum

From the House of the Dead is Czech composer Leoš Janáček’s final opera, having been left virtually complete when he died in 1928 and premiering two years later. It is based on Dostoyevsky’s eponymous novel of 1862, which describes life, and the experiences of several convicts, in a Siberian prison camp. The piece has never before appeared at the Royal Opera House, and in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s new staging, which represents a co-production...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream of 1960 is Benjamin Britten’s operatic take on Shakespeare’s eponymous play. It follows the original story reasonably closely, although it focuses on certain aspects of the plot and downgrades the prominence of others. Robert Carsen’s classic production for English National Opera premiered in 1995. A new version by Christopher Alden was actually introduced in 2011, but Carsen’s was so impossible to keep down that it now returns to...

The stage is a space where life – or its simulation – is presented in an intense, concentrated way, where emotions and feelings guide the characters and their actions. In theatre, especially in opera, and in general in all scenic arts, the aim is always to achieve something intense. Life is tepid, the stage is always hot. If one cannot achieve an extraordinary success one must at least achieve an extraordinary failure that grabs the attention. Anything but an anodyne,...

Philip Glass is recognised as one of the leading figures in minimalism today. He has written over twenty-five operas, and three of these form a trilogy that focus on pivotal figures in the fields of science, politics and religion respectively. Einstein on the Beach premiered in 1976 before the triptych was completed eight years later with Akhnaten. In between these came Satyagraha in 1980, which explores the early active life of Mahatma Gandhi. It focuses on political struggle as it...

Based on Prosper Mérimée’s eponymous novella, Georges Bizet’s Carmen of 1875 is the story of the ultimate temptress. A gypsy and cigarette factory worker in Seville, Carmen has the power to entice any man she chooses. Once, however, they are besotted with her she quickly moves on, leaving them heart broken and unable to accept what has happened. In the opera Don José, an army corporal, has almost everything he could ever desire. He has decided to marry...

The story in Claudio Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, performed here in English as The Return of Ulysses, of 1639 is taken from the second half of Homer’s Odyssey. In it Ulysses, King of Ithaca, finally returns to his kingdom following ten years fighting in The Trojan Wars and a further decade lost at sea. His wife Penelope has remained faithful throughout his long absence, in spite of loathsome suitors queuing up to persuade her to forget him and embrace...