Virtuoso tour de force of triviality: Barrie Kosky's production of Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims at the Salzburg Festival

Rossini: Il viaggio a Reims - Tara Erraught, Cecilia Bartoli - Salzburg Festival (Photo: Monika Rittershaus)

Rossini: Il viaggio a Reims; Cecilia Bartoli, Marina Viotti, Mélissa Petit, Tara Erraught, Edgardo Rocha, Dmitry Korchak, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, Florian Sempey, Misha Kiria, Peter Kellner, Giovanni Romeo, dir: Barrie Kosky, Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco, cond: Gianluca Capuano; Salzburg Festival
Reviewed 5 August 2026

Rossini's occasional comedy reinvented by Barrie Kosky as hyperactive farce in an over the top performance with strong musical contributions

Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims was written for an occasion, the coronation of Charles X of France, and never performed again, though Rossini's music is of the highest quality. He would, in fact, re-use material in Le comte Orgy and but it was not until the 1980s that the original work was performed again. It is more than an occasional piece, the music ensures that, though companies music field a wide range of Rossini stylists.

Barrie Kosky's production of Rossini's Il viaggo a Reims debuted at the Salzburg Easter Festival and returned to Salzburg's Haus für Mozart for the summer Salzburg Festival, opening on 5 August 2026. Gianluca Capuano conducted Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco, a period instrument ensemble whose founding was the inspiration of Cecilia Bartoli. She was something of a presiding genius over this production, not only singing Corinna but appearing out of a cake as herself at the climax of celebrations at the end of the opera.

The rest of the cast included Marina Viotti as Marchesa Melibea, Mélissa Petit as Contessa di Folleville, Tara Erraught as Madama Cortese, Edgardo Rocha as Cavalier Belfiore, Dmitry Korchak as Conte di Libenskof, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo as Lord Sidney, Florian Sempey as Don Profundo, Misha Kiria as Barone di Trombonok, Peter Kellner as Don Alvaro, and Giovanni Romeo as Don Prudenzio, with the Choeur de l'Opéra de Monte-Carlo.

Rossini: Il viaggio a Reims - Peter Kellner, Florian Sempey - Salzburg Festival (Photo: Monika Rittershaus)

In the programme book, Barrie Kosky described the work as 'an exquisite confection' commenting that 'the characters are not developed', they have to be 'fleshed out by the performers'. In Rossini's day this probably relied on his distinguished singers (who included Giuditta Pasta and Laure Cinti-Damoreau) bringing out the original Romantic context for each of the set pieces. Kosky's solution was to play the piece as hyperactive farce. His production had many of the elements of farce, not just its pacing and mad-cap activities. There were plenty of entrances and doors - five in the first scene including three revolving doors, 13 in the second scene. There was much bedroom hopping in that second scene, along with many characters stripped down to their underwear. All prime ingredients of farce.

Bright Young Things to the fore: Liam Steel's new production of Strauss' Die Fledermaus at Opera Holland Park revels in its 1920s London setting

Johann Strauss: Die Fledermaus - Alison Langer, Harry Wilson - Opera Holland Park (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Johann Strauss: Die Fledermaus; Thomas Atkins, Alison Langer, Rebecca Bottone, Clare Presland, Julien Van Mellaerts, Xavier Hetherington, director: Liam Steel, City of London Sinfonia, conductor George Jackson; Opera Holland Park
Reviewed 29 July 2026

London 1929 is the setting for Liam Steel's engaging production full of Bright Young Things, helped by strong musical values under George Jackson though perhaps dialogue does not fizz quite enough

Johann Strauss's operettas were highly popular in his lifetime, particularly in Vienna, but apart from Die Fledermaus they have struggled to find a place in the repertoire - when did you last come across a performance of Eine Nacht in Venedig or Der Zigeunerbaron? The fault laid against them is often that the librettos were poor, partly this is because many were based on boulevard comedies. Mistaken identities, disguise and farcical situations are often key and a lesser known work like Blindekuh (Blind man's buff, see my review of the 2002 recording) seems to have too much plot for its own good.

Cannily, Die Fledermaus solves this problem partly by having a key element of the plot happen well before the opera starts, a trick with which Verdi (Il trovatore) and Wagner (Parsifal) were both familiar. The other canny element is the Act Two party, where stray bits of plot can happen in quick succession alongside a bubbly score. And that is the point, Strauss operettas work because of their scores, because of his infectious melodies.

Whilst Die Fledermaus is the best known of Strauss's operettas, it hardly gets over-performed in the UK. The Grange Festival performed it last year [see my review], and fringe opera company St Paul's Opera did it in 2024 [see our article]. But before then we came across Opera Integra in 2017 [see our review] and Opera Holland Park in 2016 [see my review], with ENO presenting a single run of Christopher Alden's production in 2013 [see our review], whilst the Royal Opera last performed it in 1990!

Johann Strauss: Die Fledermaus - Julien Van Mellaerts, Clare Presland, Alison Langer, Thomas Atkins - Opera Holland Park (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Ten years on from their last production, Opera Holland Park returned to Strauss's Die Fledermaus on 29 July 2026 in a new production directed by Liam Steel (who also provided the choreography) and conducted by George Jackson with City of London Sinfonia in the pit. Sets were by Neil Irish and costumes by Laura Jane Stanfield. Eisenstein was Thomas Atkins, Rosalinde was Alison Langer, Rebecca Bottone was Adele, Clare Presland was Orlofsky, and Julien Van Mellaerts was Falke.

Beyond the Gothic melodrama: Opera Holland Park revives Verdi's Un ballo in maschera with Elin Pritchard, Matteo Desole, Dario Solari

Verdi: Un ballo in maschera; Elin Pritchard, Matteo Desole, Dario Solari, Rosalind Plowright, dir: Rodula Gaitanou, City of London Sinfonia, cond: Michael Papadopoulos; Opera Holland Park
Reviewed 25 July 2026

Superbly sung with a real sense of the underlying melodrama of the piece. Gaitanou's 1940s Hollywood setting really comes together for a highly taut and disturbing final act 

Verdi's Un ballo in maschera has a famously complex history. Planned for the 1858 Carnival season at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, controversy over the subject matter and the heavy hand of the Neapolitan censors meant that the opera debuted in revised form in 1859 in Rome. The source for the libretto was Eugène Scribe's libretto for Daniel Auber's 1833 five act opera, Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué. 

Verdi was familiar with French grand opera, he had had two not entirely successful attempts at writing in the genre - Jérusalem (a major rewrite of I Lombardi) in 1847 and Les vêpres siciliennes (with a libretto by Scribe) in 1855. He had also produced a grand opera version of Il trovatore as Le trouvère in 1856 [see my review of Le trouvère at Wexford Festival]. His fascination with the genre was partly economic and reputational - the Paris Opera paid well and success there was a significant event. But it would only be in 1867 with Don Carlos that he 'cracked' the genre, however his experience of French grand opera would cast a long shadow on his later Italian operas, so that Aida for instance has clear links to the genre.

Un ballo in maschera is a fascinating example of the way Verdi and his librettists took elements of the French grand opera genre but projected them onto a tauter dramatic structure. There is still a ball as the climax of the opera, but it has an important dramatic function. Similarly, the scene at Madame Arvidson's is stripped of frivolity and wrapped into the dramatic structure. And the opera has none of the length problems that beset Don Carlos when presented in Italian opera houses.

Opera Holland Park had a notable success with its 2019 production of Un ballo in maschera [see my review], which was also that year's Young Artists production [see my review]. Now the production has been revived for the first time with a largely new cast. We caught the opening night on Saturday 25 July 2026. Rodula Gaitanou again directed (with Harriet Taylor as assistant director), and Michael Papadopoulos conducted the City of London Sinfonia. Designs were by takis. Gustavo was sung by Matteo Desole, Amelia by Elin Pritchard, Anckarstrom by Dario Solari, Oscar by Rhian Lois and Madame Arvidson by Rosalind Plowright (who sang in the original production). The conspirators were Jihoon Kim and Duncan Stenhouse.

It was Francesca Caccini's score, & Vache Baroque's performance, that surprised & captivated: La liberazione di Ruggiero at Buxton International Festival

Francesca Caccini: La liberazione di Ruggiero - Jon Stainsby, Camilla Seale - Vache Baroque at Buxton International Festival (Photo: Genevieve Girling)

Francesca Caccini: La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina; Camilla Seale, Jon Stainsby, Phoebe Rayner, Vache Baroque, director: Eloise Lally, music director: Jonathan Darbourne; Buxton International Festival at Pavilion Arts Centre

Dazzling instrumental playing with music that seduced in a trifle over-serious staging but with some fine individual performances make this a notable revival of Francesca Caccini's rarely staged gem

La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina by Francesca Caccini has the reputation as the first opera by a woman composer. Certainly, it is Caccini's only surviving opera, written for the Medici court in Florence in 1625. It remains, however, on the fringe of the repertoire though Brighton Early Music Festival (BREMF) staged it in 2015 [see my review]

Vache Baroque have been presenting their production of Caccini's La liberazione di Ruggiero at Buxton International Festival in the Pavilion Arts Centre (seen 21 July 2026), directed by Eloise Lally (who directed Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore for St Paul's Opera last year, see my review) with Jonathan Darbourne as music director. Designs were by Zahra Mansouri and lighting by Katie Kelly. Camilla Seale was Alcina, Jon Stainsby was Ruggiero, Phoebe Rayner was Melissa and Filippo Turkheimer was Nettuno with Betty Makharinsky, Harriet Burns, Alina Miyagi Magnell and Tom Kelly. Jonathan Darbourne directed from the harpsichord with an instrumental ensemble of three violins, viola da gamba, violone, three recorders, three sackbuts, theorbo and organ. The staging encompassed the whole stage with the instrumental ensemble spread around the auditorium. Caccini's full scoring does not survive; no credit was given in the programme so I presume that it is to Darbourne we have to thank for the particular orchestration here.

Francesca Caccini: La liberazione di Ruggiero - Phoebe Rayner - Vache Baroque at Buxton International Festival (Photo: Genevieve Girling)

The plot, based on Ariosto, is similar to the one from Handel only here Ruggiero is rescued by another sorceress, Melissa, and Alcina turns people into plants rather than animals. Eloise Lally's concept of the plot took her some way from Caccini's court entertainment which was written for a visiting prince (and originally ended with a horse ballet). Here magic was played down. Lally explained her concept in the programme book:

'Set within a world on the brink of collapse, this work explores the tension between preservation and reinvention. Through the opposing forces of Alcina and Melissa, it questions who has the right to shape the future: those who uphold existing systems of power, or those who seek to dismantle and rebuild them entirely.'

Katie Kelly's lighting was certainly atmospheric but it did rather obscure some of the details of the staging, making the plot a little opaque. The production worked best when it forgot about explaining the mechanics of the plot and concentrated on personal interactions and the sheer seductive power of Caccini's music.

Musically, an evening of complete enjoyment: Olivia Fuchs's playful 'Love Island' setting for Handel's Amadigi in Buxton

Handel: Amadigi di Gaula - Tim Morgan, Hilary Cronin, Rowan Pierce - Buxton International Festival (Photo: Genevieve Girling)

Handel: Amadigi di Gaula; Tim Morgan, Rowan Pierce, Hilary Cronin, James Hall, director: Olivia Fuchs, the English Concert, conductor: Erin Helyard; Buxton International Festival at Buxton Opera House
Reviewed 20 July 2026

By turns playful and distracting, Olivia Fuchs's production allowed a fine young cast to develop strong performances combining enjoyment and engagement with technical bravura

Handel's opera Amadigi di Gaula (1715) belongs to a small group of operas he wrote when he first came to London and the exact form of his style of opera seria was not yet fixed. Like its predecessor Teseo (1713), Amadigi is based on a French source and there are tantalising hints that the original plans for the opera included French elements such as dancing. [see my article on Handel's experimental early London period.] As it is, Amadigi has a freedom of form that makes it attractive to modern directors.

Olivia Fuchs has directed Handel's Amadigi di Gaula for the Buxton International Festival at Buxton Opera House. We caught the final performance on 20 July 2026. Erin Helyard (artistic director of Pinchgut Opera) conducted the English Concert with Tim Morgan (replacing Jake Ingbar) as Amadigi, Rowan Pierce as Oriana, Hilary Cronin as Melissa and James Hall as Dardano. Designs were by Eleanor Bull with lighting by Ben Pickersgill.

Both Cronin and Morgan have form with this opera. Tim Morgan sang the title role with English Touring Opera in 2021 (directed by James Conway, conducted by Jonathan Peter Kenny, see my review), whilst Hilary Cronin sang Oriana in concert with the English Concert (conducted by Kristian Bezuidenhout, see my review).

Handel: Amadigi di Gaula - James Hall - Buxton International Festival (Photo: Genevieve Girling)

The opera has one of those 'black box' plots beloved of opera seria: the characters all confined to a single place. Here, four people in a love tangle: Melissa loves Amadigi who loves Oriana as does Dardano, all complicated by Melissa's power as a sorceress. What elevates the opera is the extraordinary power of the music for Melissa and Dardano, both of whom are disappointed in love.

More than a concert: Mozart's La clemenza di Tito at the Buxton Festival brings out the work's real drama

Mozart: La clemenza di Tito; Maria Stella Maurizi, Indyana Schneider, Xavier Mas, Frances Gregory, director: Corina Würsch, conductor: Adrian Kelly, Buxton International Festival; Buxton Opera House
Reviewed: 19 July 2026

A mainly young cast brings out the dramatic strengths in a semi-staging of Mozart's late opera with compelling performances from Maria Stella Maurizi and Indyana Schneider

Like the Grange Festival [see my review] last month, Buxton International Festival (BIF) has opted to explore Mozart's late masterpiece, La clemenza di Tito via a pair of concert performances (seen 19 July 2026). Adrian Kelly, artistic director of the Festival, conducted the BIF Orchestra (which mixes seasoned professionals with early career players) and the concert staging was directed by Corina Würsch who as assistant director/movement director on the Festival's recent production of Verdi's La traviata. Würsch was also movement director for Blackheath Halls Opera's 2025 production of Gluck's Iphigenia in Tauris [see my review].

Adrian Kelly is also head of the International Opera Studio (IOS) at Zurich Opera and the casting leveraged this connection. Italian soprano Maria Stella Maurizi (Vitellia) and Australian mezzo-soprano Indyana Schneider (Sesto) are current members of the IOS Zurich whilst New Zealand-born baritone Samson Setu (Publio) is a former member. Tito was played by French tenor Xavier Mas with Frances Gregory (whom we recently saw as Idamante in Mozart's Idomeneo with Chelsea Opera Group, see my review) as Annio and Jessica Lawley as Servilia.

The orchestra was on stage which helped put them centre stage for once, though the sound was perhaps a little recessed. Adrian Kelly played the forte piano recitatives and the instrument a little too discreet for the space.

The acting space was a wide strip in front of the orchestra with Würsch's production concentrating on basics. The result was some admirably character-led drama. Costumes were simply variants of modern concert dress, though it was perhaps a trifle confusing to have Maria Stella Maurizi's Vitellia wearing trousers (albeit very elegantly) when two other women in the cast played en travestie. The chorus was off-stage for the conclusion of Act One but for the other appearances the singers efficiently filed on and off stage left.

Compelling music drama: Wagner's Tristan und Isolde returns to Longborough Festival Opera with Peter Wedd & Catharine Woodward, conductor Anthony Negus

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde - Peter Wedd - Longborough Festival Opera (Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis)

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde; Peter Wedd, Catharine Woodward, Catherine Carby, Robert Hayward, Alistair Miles, director: Carmen Jakobi/Guido Martin-Brandis, conductor: Anthony Negus; Longborough Festival Opera
Reviewed 12 July 2026

An Isolde who prized tonal beauty, a vividly intense and heroic Tristan welded into a compelling performance where detailed personen regie was allied to strong musical values and an admirable lack of irritating concepts

Wagner's Tristan und Isolde was premiered in Munich in 1865 with Ludwig and Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld in the title roles. Their being husband and wife solving one of the work's problems - that the story and Wagner's treatment of it was considered somehow improper! But this was Wagner's first attempt at staging the work, even the well-funded Hofoper in Vienna had failed. Despite over 70 rehearsals between 1862 and 1864, Vienna entirely failed to stage the opera.

The confounding thing about Tristan und Isolde was not so much its length: works by Halévy and Meyerbeer at the Paris Opera lasted as long. But even Meyerbeer's Le prophète (the success of which Wagner both despised and envied), with its taxing tenor lead role, had long stretches when the tenor did not sing, the focus turning to other characters or large scale ensembles.

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde - Ludwig & Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld - Hofoper, Munich 1865

Tristan und Isolde has none of these, Wagner's focus is largely on the two protagonists and the early attempts to stage it fell because singers struggled to learn the roles and the number of requisite voices able to sing them was probably small. Tristan requires a very different type of stamina to the Meyerbeer's large tenor roles, though later in the 19th century a tenor like Jean de Reske would sing both Meyerbeer and Wagner in the same season [see my 2015 review of Karen Henson's book Opera Acts: Singers and Performance in the Late Nineteeth Century].

Longborough Festival Opera's production of Tristan und Isolde (its first ever) debuted in 2015, the product of the husband and wife team of director Carmen Jakobi and conductor Anthony Negus. Revived in 2017, it returned this year (seen 12 July 2026) with Guido Martin-Brandis as associate director. Peter Wedd returned to Tristan (a role he sang here in 2015 and 2017) and Catharine Woodward made her role debut as Isolde. Catherine Carby was Brangäne, Robert Hayward was Kurwenal, Alistair Miles was King Mark, Brian Smith Walters was Melot, Peter Bronder was the shepherd. Designs were by Kimie Nakano. Lucy Cullingford was movement director and intimacy coordinator.

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde - Peter Wedd, Catharine Woodward - Longborough Festival Opera (Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis)

There have evidently been changes to the production since 2015 and what we saw this year combined simple yet effective abstract stage pictures with strong and detailed personenregie. The produced was admirably free of concepts. An intimacy coordinator was credited, so even before the first notes of the prelude we knew this was not one of those productions where Tristan and Isolde never actually touch. In fact, I felt that the maker's of Catharine Woodward's non-smudge lipstick deserved their own credit. Costumes were atmospheric and non-specific, though there was something evocative of The Last Samurai about Peter Wedd's outfit.

Gutsy & vivid: Verdi's La traviata at St Paul's Opera imaginatively reinvents the work as parable of punk London

Verdi: La traviata - Christian Joel, Isobel Hughes, Ted Day - St Paul's Opera (Photo: Julian Guidera)

Verdi: La traviata; Lizzie Ryder, Christian Joel, Owain Gwynfryn, director: Edwina Strobl, music director: Adrian Salinero, St Paul's Opera; St Paul's Church, Clapham
Reviewed 4 July 2026

A varied and vivid incarnation of Violetta's demi-monde as punk with an upfront, take-no-prisoners account of the title role from Lizzie Ryder

The problem for any production of Verdi's La traviata is not so much that we no longer have a demi-monde but that its denizens, in the modern world, have changed radically from the 1850s. Period productions generally hide this culture clash behind nice frocks and few stagings manage to evoke the outrage that surrounded the first London performance of the work in 1856. Yet changes in attitudes mean that simply moving the setting to modern day rarely works, the culture clash just is not compelling enough.

In her production of Verdi's La traviata for St Paul's Opera, director Edwina Strobl's decision to choose a punk setting for Violetta's milieu might have had a big element of budgetary necessity (punk outfits come cheaper than big frocks), but it works in terms of dramaturgy and emotional journey.

We caught the final of St Paul's Opera's performances of Verdi's La traviata at St Paul's Church in Clapham on Saturday 4 July 2026. Directed by Edwina Strobl and designed by Pin Chen with choreography by Agur Arrien, the work featured Lizzie Ryder as Violetta, Christian Joel as Alfredo, Owain Gwynfryn as Germont, Salome Siu as Flora and Rebecca Hart as Annina. Music director Adrian Salinerno directed a small instrumental ensemble.

Verdi: La traviata - Christian Joel, Ted Day, Lizzie Ryder, Salome Siu - St Paul's Opera (Photo: Julian Guidera)

Designer Pin Chen's abstract set did admirable duty for all the opera's locations and having Violetta's bed raised up towards the rear of the stage in the final scene worked well. The set also successfully disguised the fact that we weren't actually in a theatre but a church. The costumes for the punks - effectively everyone but Alfredo (Christian Joel) and Germont (Owain Gwynfryn) - were varied and vividly imaginative with two or three having direct reference to Vivienne Westwood (later a Clapham resident), Malcolm McLaren and their circle.

The production set the action within the context of Violetta's funeral during the prelude, and throughout the opera Strobl's production used a great deal of the space including the church's Angelus bell.

Giulio Cesare at the Grange: superb music performances compensate for David Alden's scattershot approach to Handel's masterpiece

Handel: Giulio Cesare - Zheng Jiang, Owen Willetts, Jess Dandy - The Grange Festival (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith)

Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto; Tim Mead, Sarah Brady, Jess Dandy, Zheng Jiang, James Atkinson, director: David Alder, Early Opera Company, conductor Christian Curnyn; The Grange Festival
Reviewed 25 June 2026

Superbly satisfying musical performances all round from a cast who enter with a will into director David Alden's eclectic vision, clearly responding to his approach no matter how scattershot the ideas. 

When watching modern productions of Handel's Giulio Cesare it is easy to get a bit blazé. But it is worth remembering quite how far we have come. New York City Opera's ground-breaking production of the work with Beverly Sills dazzling as Cleopatra and a bass Cesare (Norman Treigle), came in 1966, the first uncut performance (in modern times) with voices at the correct pitch was at the Barber Institute in Birmingham in 1972, then English National Opera's production directed by John Copley, conducted by Charles Mackerras with Janet Baker and Valerie Masterson came in 1978. This was cut, but sympathetically, and Copley's production was rather stately yet it demonstrated that this type of opera belonged in the modern opera house. By 2005, at Glyndebourne, David McVicar's production had the confidence to reinvent the work without doing it violence and we now had period instruments in the pit.

Veteran director David Alden's career has paralleled much of this timeline. He began directing at Opera Omaha in the 1970s and his first European production was Verdi's Rigoletto for Scottish Opera in the late 1970s (and yes, I was there). He became famous (infamous) for his productions at ENO during the powerhouse era and I remember his production of Handel's Ariodante as being a powerful example of the way modern theatre direction could be brought to Handel.

Alden's enthusiasm for Handel seems undimmed and the Grange Festival invited him to direct a new production of Handel's Giulio Cesare at this year's festival. It turns out to be the first time Alden has directed by work. We caught the final performance on 25 June 2026. Christian Curnyn conducted the Early Opera Company with Tim Mead as Giulio Cesare, Sarah Brady as Cleopatra, Hugh Cutting as Tolomeo, Jess Dandy as Cornelia, Zheng Jiang as Sesto, James Atkinson as Achilla, Owen Willetts as Nireno, and Tristan Hambleton as Curio. Designs were by Jon Morrell, movement by Tim Claydon and lighting by Matthew Richardson. There was no chorus (the choral numbers were sung by the ensemble), but there was a movement group of five. Continuo was provided by Oliver John Ruthven (harpsichord), Eligio Quinteiro (theorbo) and Andrew Skidmore (cello).

Giulio Cesare is a long opera. When English Touring Opera performed it uncut in 2017 they spread it over two evenings (a brave experiment, see my review). At the Grange it was performed cut (of course) with one interval, mid-way through Act Two.

Alden and Morrell's approach to the work seems to have involved a lot of free association. Egypt, right? So Nireno (Owen Willetts) was a mummy, there were lots of Ancient Egyptian symbols, Tolomeo's (Hugh Cutting) garden was full of oppressive plants and dangerous animals (including snakes). When, at the end of Act Two, Sarah Brady's Cleopatra says she's dying (a metaphorical turn of phrase), the jackal-headed god appeared to row her to the underworld, and elsewhere in the opera she had a fascination with asps! Costumes were similarly eclectic with different frames of reference. Curio (Owen Willetts) was a real Roman centurion, but Cesare (Tim Mead) seemed stuck in the mid-20th century, whilst Sesto (Zheng Jiang) was a schoolboy who when girding himself for action, dressed as an American footballer!

The whole approach felt a bit scattershot, and rather reminded me of the worst of 1980s and 1990s opera direction. Some scenes were (deliberately) funny such as the musical chairs during Tolomeo and Cesare's first meeting. Other moments were found funny by the audience but I was unclear whether Alden intended this. The result was busy, with the stage nearly always full of colour and movement. The hardworking movement group were constantly used. Some decisions were clearly practical: the opening scenes of Act Three were played in front of the curtain because the set for Cesare's emergence from the sea was complex. Yet, given the curtain, Alden could not resist a series of gags with singers crawling under it and failing to find the split in the curtains. Not for the first time, I felt that non-English directors should be given a crash course in English humorous references (curtain gags are pure Morecambe & Wise).

Handel: Giulio Cesare - Hugh Cutting, Sarah Brady - The Grange Festival (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith)

It's all about the music: Opera Holland Park chorus & City of London Sinfonia on terrific form under Naomi Woo in powerful, celebratory Turandot

Puccini: Turandot - José de Eça - Opera Holland Park (Photo: Pablo Strong)

Puccini: Turandot; Anne Sophie Duprels, José de Eça, Fflur Wyn, Jihoon Kim, Robert, Burt, Josef Jeongmeen Ahn, Joseph Buckmaster, Zwakele Tshabalala, director: Eleanor Burke, City of London Sinfonia, conductor: Naomi Woo; Opera Holland Park

A powerful evening from Opera Holland Park's chorus, youth chorus and the City of London Sinfonia who fill the auditorium with music, in a performance perhaps unsubtle at times yet always thrilling.

Puccini's Turandot is the only one of the composer's operas not performed at Opera Holland Park. To celebrate the company's 30th anniversary, the centenary of the first performance of Turandot and soprano Anne Sophie Duprels 25-year association with the company, Turandot was presented in a concert staging on Tuesday 23 June at Opera Holland Park. Naomi Woo conducted with Duprels as Turandot, José de Eça as Calaf, Fflur Wyn as Liu, Jihoon Kim as Timur, Robert Burt as Altoum, Josef Jeongmeen Ahn, Joseph Buckmaster and Zwakele Tshabalala as Ping, Pang and Pong, and Wonsick Oh as the Mandarin.

Though performed in a reduced orchestration the City of London Sinfonia spilled out of the pit and onto the stage (trumpets and trombones stage right, percussion with its array of tam-tams stage left). An expanded Opera Holland Park chorus sat on the main stage and sang from copies, and were joined at times by the Opera Holland Park Youth Chorus. This latter was formed in 2025 and this was its first appearance on one of OHP's operatic stagings.

Puccini: Turandot - Anne Sophie Duprels - Opera Holland Park (Photo: Pablo Strong)

From the outset, Naomi Woo shaped the opera commandingly and the orchestral sound filled the auditorium with colour and movement. Too much so, at times, frankly, as in the work's more intimate moments you felt that lack of a pit to cover the sound. This was a loud performance of a loud opera, and the quieter, more reflective passages could have done with being emphasised more. That said the orchestra and choral contributions were effectively the real highlights of the evening. For Turandot to work you need to be carried away by the whole, not just thrilled by 'Nessun dorma' and here Woo and her forces definitely blew us away.

Powerful moments: Paul Wingfield directs Chelsea Opera Group in an impressive account of Mozart's Idomeneo with Andrew Henley & Eleanor Dennis

Mozart: Idomeneo  - Chelsea Opera Group, Paul Wingfield - Cadogan Hall

Mozart: Idomeneo; Andrew Henley, Eleanor Dennis, Lorena Paz Nieto, Frances Gregory, Sean Tester, Chelsea Opera Group, Paul Wingfield; Cadogan Hall
Reviewed 21 June 2026

Some powerful individual performances contribute to an account of the opera under conductor Paul Wingfield that developed into powerful music drama in Act Three

Having conducted Mozart's La clemenza di Tito with Chelsea Opera Group in 2023 [a performance that had 'plenty of style and lots to enjoy', see my review], Paul Wingfield returned to the company on 21 June 2026 for Mozart's other great mature opera seria, Idomeneo at Cadogan Hall. The cast featured Lorena Paz Nieto as Ilia, Frances Gregory as a mezzo-soprano Idamante (the work was performed in the original 1781 Munich version), Eleanor Dennis as Elettra, Sean Tester as Arbace and Andrew Henley as Idomeno, with Dafydd Allen as the High Priest, Emyr Wyn Jones as the Oracle and four students from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Phoebe Curcher, Laura Toomey, Justin Jacobs, William Swinnerton as the chorus soloists. Oliver John Ruthven provided forte-piano continuo.

Idomeneo remains something of a textual minefield. The original 1781 production was somewhat fraught with Mozart having to make cuts and changes due to the work's excessive length. He made adaptations for the 1786 Vienna performance with Idamante as a tenor, but never got the chance to create what he thought of as the definitive version. Evidently he wanted to revise the work to bring out the Gluckian elements. 

The libretto was adapted from the French by Giambattista Varesco who seems to have had some familiarity with the work of Gluck and Calzabigi. Part of the fascination of Idomeneo is the way the work looks in one direction to Gluck and French opera, with its choruses, marches and ballet music alongside structural links to opera such as Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride. Yet on the other hand, Mozart was writing arias for Italian-trained singers and his music is remarkably prescient in the way that he looks forward to his mature operas.

Chelsea Opera Group presented the opera in a version that ran for three hours including interval. The ballet music was reduced to a single movement, there were cuts, but Act Three was substantially complete (Elettra's final aria is sometimes a casualty) and Arbace had a single aria. The secco recitative was, I think, trimmed and certainly the balance tipped towards the accompanied recitative. It is this latter that makes the opera so distinctive, especially the way Mozart leans in to the fluidity in the drama. There is a modernity to these and the contrast with the stand-alone arias is notable.

Oliver John Ruthven provided admirably fluent continuo for secco recitatives which had a nice sense of impulse to them, whilst the whole performance seemed to lean into the accompanied recitatives. These provided some of the most powerful moments in the opera as singers, orchestra and conductor came together in the drama.

Light & shade: Laurence Cummings, Academy of Ancient Music & a terrific cast make Handel's Serse into a captivating & engaging evening in the theatre

Handel: Serse - Paula Murrihy, Louise Alder - Academy of Ancient Music, the Barbican (Photo: Mark Allan)

Handel: Serse; Paula Murrihy, Louise Alder, Rachel Redmond, Rebecca Leggett, Claudia Huckle, Luca Tittoto, Thomas Chenhall, Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings; Barbican Hall
Reviewed 19 June 2026

A lightly staged concert performance which wore scholarship and technical prowess lightly, bringing out the light and shade in Handel's opera and making a captivating and engaging evening

Perhaps because Nicholas Hytner's 1985 production at English National Opera cast such a long shadow (it was last revived in 2014 with Alice Coote and Sarah Tynan, see my review) stagings of Handel's Serse are not particularly common and recent London outings have been in concert. 

In concert, the performance can avoid taking too much of a stand on how funny the opera is. During Handel's lifetime performances would have been notable for the way the work wrong-footed audiences. Presented as an opera seria, it avoids many of the standard tropes: arias are often short, less than half the arias are da capo and the exit aria is rare. The whole opening scene has a fluidity that we now know looks forward to Handel's methods in oratorio, creating large structures from smaller segments. But after the hero's opening cavatina (here Serse's 'Ombra mai fui') audiences would have expected him to get a big aria and leave. Not a bit. And then the heroine's opening aria is variously done off-stage and interrupted! The result is a naturalism that modern audiences enjoy but which would have wrong-footed contemporary listeners and which means we can never really recapture the opera's original effect.

On Friday 19 June 2026, Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music chose to present Handel's Serse at the Barbican Centre with a very light dramatic touch in a concert staging blessedly free from concept and featuring a strong cast. Paula Murrihy was Serse with Louise Alder as Romilda, Rachel Redmond as Atalanta, Rebecca Leggett as Arsamene, Claudia Huckle as Amastre, Luca Tittoto as Ariodate and Thomas Chenhall as Elviro.

Handel: Serse - Rebecca Leggett, Rachel Redmond - Academy of Ancient Music, the Barbican (Photo: Mark Allan)

Handel's original cast featured a rather intriguing mix of gender bending. The title role was sung by a soprano castrato (Caffarelli) with Arsamene played 'en travestie' by a woman, then the (female) contralto playing Amastre actually spends most of the opera disguised as a man! Nowadays Serse is sung by female mezzo-sopranos though I have heard it sung by a countertenor (Jake Arditti sang it at Longborough in 2015, see my review) and the gender-fluid aspect of the piece does not seem to have been much explored. At the Barbican, Murrihy, Leggett and Huckle all presented as women dressed as men and the audience accepted it admirably with none of the titters that marred the recent performance of Mozart's La clemenza di Tito at The Grange Festival where some audience members seemed to find a female singer referring to herself as a male character as something innately funny. As Frankie Howerd might have said, 'titter ye not'.

A day at Aldeburgh: Lise Davidsen's Aldeburgh Festival début in Schubert and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande semi-staged

Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande - Myrna Tennant, Camilla Seale, Phoebe Rayner - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Schubert: Gretchen am Spinnrade; Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister; Der Tod und das Mädchen; Erlkönig; Lise Davidsen soprano, James Baillieu piano; Snape Maltings Concert Hall

Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande; Jacques Imbrailo (Pelléas), Sophie Bevan (Mélisande), Gordon Bintner (Golaud), Sarah Connolly (Geneviève), Nicolas Testé (Arkël), Beth Stirling (Yniold); dir: Rory Kinnear, set/costume designer Vicki Mortimer, lighting designers Paule Constable/Imogen Clark; BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, cond. Ryan Wigglesworth; Snape Maltings Concert Hall

Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 13 June 2026

Making her Aldeburgh Festival début, Lise Davidsen delivered a memorable afternoon recital of Schubert Lieder brilliantly accompanied by the pianist, James Baillieu. In the evening, the semi-staged performance of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande highlighted the brilliance of the orchestral playing from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ryan Wigglesworth and the conversational clarity of the singers with Sophie Bevan and Jacques Imbrailo in the title roles. 

[Elsewhere on Planet Hugill, Robert chats to James Baillieu about his new role on the Britten Pears Arts Young Artist Programme and to Ryan Wigglesworth about being Featured Artist at this year's festival]

I was more than proud being a member of the audience when Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen made her Bayreuth Festival début in 2019 as Elisabeth in Tobias Kratzer’s outstanding but unconventional modern staging of Tannhäuser. [see Tony's review] The show featured an odd assortment of characters up to no good either riding a battered old Citroën Type-H van (Venusberg on wheels), nicking burgers from Burger King or siphoning off petrol - and the rest! Get the picture?

Her Bayreuth performance was immaculate, catapulting her into the upper echelons of the opera world while cementing her status as one of the world’s leading Wagnerians. Her Aldeburgh début follows suit. I found it satisfying being in the cosy, comfortable and spartan space of the Snape Maltings Concert Hall harbouring acoustics, I feel, perfect for voice and piano and so ideal for Davidsen singing Schubert Lieder.

James Baillieu, Lise Davidsen - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

Admirably accompanied by James Baillieu on piano, Davidsen opened with such glowing and accurate accounts of Gretchen am Spinnrade and Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister, a couple of acclaimed art-songs that Schubert set to texts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

La Clemenza di Tito: despite a lack of staging, Christopher Rousset & Les Talens Lyriques light up the stage in Mozart's great final opera at The Grange Festival

Mozart: La Clemenza di Tito - Aphrodite Patoulidou, Christophe Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques - The Grange Festival (Photo: Connor Apps)

Mozart: La clemenza di Tito: Jeremy Ovenden, Aphrodite Patoulidou, Maite Beaumont, Anna El-Khashem,  Ambroisine Bré, Adrien Fournaison, Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset; The Grange Festival
Reviewed 9 June 2026

A welcome opportunity to hear Mozart's great last opera in vividly dramatic performances that really reached over the footlights along with the sophisticated sounds of Les Talens Lyriques 

Mozart's great final opera, La clemenza di Tito has never had the regular place in the repertoire that it deserves. Coming after the three great Da Ponte operas and Die Zauberflöte the opera can seem something of a step backwards, towards the type of opera Mozart was writing in his teens. Following the premiere of Idomeneo in 1781, Mozart had a wish (unfulfilled) to rework the opera in a more Gluckian cast and something of this survives in the changes he made for the 1786 performance in Vienna with a tenor Idamante. The fascination with reworking traditional opera seria did not go away and whilst La clemenza di Tito seems a world away from Don Giovanni (both premiered in the same theatre in Prague), the libretto makes definitive moves away from Metastasio.

The opera remained popular after Mozart's death and was the first of his operas to reach London, in 1806, but in all probability it was not performed there again until the St Pancras Festival in 1957! Anthony Besch's 1974 production at Covent Garden played an important role in the rediscovery of the opera and this remained in production until 1989. Richard Jones's 2021 production there [see my review] does not seem set to take classic status. The work has been performed by English National Opera and by English Touring Opera but only Glyndebourne seems to keep the faith (their most recent outing was 2017, see my review). Otherwise, it is a festival work. Performed at the Edinburgh Festival last year, this year there are two different outings. Buxton Festival will be presenting two performances in July, and the Grange Festival has invited Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques to perform the work.

Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques were giving two performances at the Grange Festival (we caught the first on 9 June 2026) in association with Mozartfest Würzburg where they perform the work later this week. Rousset had assembled a very international cast. English tenor Jeremy Ovenden was Tito, Greek soprano Aphrodite Patoulidou was Vitellia, Russian-Lebanese soprano Anna El-Khashem was Servilia, Spanish mezzo-soprano Maite Beaumont was Sesto, French mezzo-soprano Ambroisine Bré was Annio and French bass-baritone Adrien Fournaison was Publio, with the Mozartfest Würzburg Choir.

Mozart: La Clemenza di Tito - Christophe Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques - The Grange Festival (Photo: Connor Apps)

The orchestra was on stage, which was a real treat, with Rousset also providing continuo piano. The backdrop, however, was a simple black curtain and the sound sometimes felt a little recessed, particularly when it came to the woodwind. The soloists were along the front stage, with scores and music stands. Thankfully these were hardly used and there was a drama and freedom to the presentation. Jeremy Ovenden barely used a score whilst Aphrodite Patoulidou's Vitellia prowled around the stage in a dramatically intense manner.

Every nuance tells: Missy Mazzoli's Proving Up receives its UK premiere at Guildhall School

Missy Mazzoli: Proving Up - Sebastian Hill, Aidan O'Donnell  - Guildhall School (Photo: David Monteith-Hodge)

Missy Mazzoli: Proving Up; director: Amy Lane, conductor: James Henshaw; Guildhall School of Music & Drama
Reviewed by Edward Lambert (5 June 2026)

It was necessary to remind oneself that this was not a professional company. Amy Lane's production extracted every ounce of drama from the text and faithfully served the music

While student singers will understandably be keen to learn roles in ‘classical’ operas, there are advantages for them in performing new, unfamiliar works while in training. They can make such roles their own without regard to tradition or well-known interpretations. And the music colleges, with their resources and a huge amount of free labour at their disposal, may well consider it their duty to champion new opera when the larger houses can ill afford to take those risks. London owes a debt of thanks, therefore, to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama for bringing Missy Mazzoli’s 2018 opera Proving Up to the Milton Court Theatre recently and there was no doubt that the young cast gave it their all and a lot more besides.

Missy Mazzoli (b. 1980) is a major force to be reckoned with in the USA and her operas flourish in the fertile soil of the American contemporary-opera scene. New operas by her will be premiered later this year at the New York Met (October) and the Edinburgh Festival (August). Her music is a far cry from the ingratiating, easy-listening style of Mark Adamo’s Little Women (seen at Opera Holland Park in 2022, see Robert's review) or even Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking (ENO, 2025). So, what with Angel’s Bone at ENO Manchester/London this year, Einstein on the Beach and Mazzoli’s own Breaking the Waves (ENO, 2027), American opera is fast conquering the UK’s contemporary-opera scene as well. (Meanwhile, the Royal Opera hasn’t yet managed to stage a single John Adams opera - an omission which is barely credible). 

Missy Mazzoli: Proving Up - Laura LeVoir, Miranda Kettlewell, Lowri Probert - Guildhall School (Photo: David Monteith-Hodge)

Unlike Breaking the Waves which is set in Scotland, Proving Up is American to the bone, its action taking place on the prairies of Nebraska following the state’s admission to the Union in 1867. The federal Homestead Act allowed migrants to claim free land if it was settled and cultivated for a period of five years. The process of supplying the required affidavits was known as Proving Up. It goes without saying that the legalities and fees involved excluded participation in the scheme by Native Americans.