On first thoughts, Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘spooky’ Ruddigore (1887) seems an odd choice for a summer opera festival. But its presentation is well timed at this point in the year and in the course of the evening such that its famous scene in Act Two, when the Murgatroyd ancestors come to life from their portraits at the …
Chemistry and music perhaps seem an odd combination, though fans of Ken Russell will recall that, in his documentary film Elgar, he included an amusing scene about that composer’s love of science with an explosion of smoke in his laboratory. However, Jonathan Dove’s new opera – based on the Itch novels by Simon Mayo – is generally more serious …
Although Boris Johnson has now been out of Downing Street for nearly a year, his misdeeds in office again pose (with depressing, unsurprising predictability) a problematic legacy for the Government to deal with. Cecilia Stinton’s new production of Rigoletto for Opera Holland Park is apt, then, in turning the Duke of Mantua’s court into the Bullingdon Club …
First, all praise to British Youth Opera for seemingly being the only company in the country mounting a stage-work by Vaughan Williams in the 150th-year of his birth. Anniversaries need not, of course, constitute the only reason to explore the less well-known aspects of a composer’s output, but with few other chances to see his …
British Youth Opera at Opera Holland Park – Vaughan Williams’s Sir John in Love Read More »
Opera Holland Park’s double bill presents an intriguing pair of short operas by composers with seemingly little connection between them. But not only do they share themes of passion, hedonism, and violent jealousy, both works originated as entries in a regular competition organised by the Italian publishing firm, Sonzogno, to identify and encourage emerging operatic …
Opera Holland Park 2022 – Delius’s Margot la Rouge & Puccini’s Le Villi Read More »
Opera Holland Park is delighted to announce a new commission and world premiere for 2023: Itch. Based on Simon Mayo’s bestselling novels Itch and Itch Rocks, composer Jonathan Dove and librettist Alasdair Middleton have been commissioned to create a new opera for Opera Holland Park. Its hero is Itchingham Holte, a teenage scientist on a mission to collect …
Opera Holland Park announces a new commission for 2023 Read More »
