John Amis online

Rossini’s Runt? The background to this opera is readworthy: Rossini composed most of Matilde di Shabran (where dat ? probably Iraq) in 1822...

Glory be! Wexford has a fine new opera house, sprung Phoenix-like on the site of the old Georgian house, standing tucked away in a little st...

October 11, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Puccini’s Bohème is revived for the 22nd time in the production by John Copley. That surely i...

Which opera tugs most persistently at your heart-strings? Surely is must be Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana . He hits your emotions roughly ...

Verdi’s Falstaff on the cheap must be the verdict on Pimlico Opera’s production 21 September at the Grange Opera House (near Alton, Hampshi...

Submarines in the pit of the Royal Opera House? No, what at first glance looked like periscopes were in fact theorbos in triplicate, the lon...

You may have seen advertisements in this journal for a summer course for singers August 1 to 9 and I went to see what goes on. To start with...

New Glyndebourne Opera August 10 The premiere at Glyndebourne of a new, commissioned opera by Peter Eötvöșa, a Hungarian composer previously...

No.61, June 13 – 29 began with a stinker and ended with a bang. Things here are changing; some of the almost derelict buildings adjacent to ...

Neither Stravinsky, Hogarth nor W.H Auden were best served by the new production at Covent Garden of The Rake’s Progress , first night of fi...

Leonard Bernstein was the all-American Mr. Music. He adored applause, he courted it, he got it and he deserved it. On form he was the top co...

Grange Park Opera Triumphs Grange Park Opera in Hampshire near Basingstoke has come of age in the current season with its production of Pu...

Don Carlos at Covent Garden 12.10.58 From ’The Scotsman’ (n.b.date) “To mark the centenary of the opening of the present Royal Opera Hou...

"Too many notes", the Emperor famously rebuked Mozart; and maybe an Emperor could have said "too many words" after the 1...

Eugene Onegin is notably superior to Tchaikovsky's other half dozen odd operas. Why? Probably because it was nearer to his private life ...

THE REST IS NOISE Listening to the Twentieth Century Alex Ross Pp 624 Fourth Estate £20 This book is well worth the money – the best survey ...

Did you know that Darcey Bussell could speak lines? Or that Kathleen Jenkins could dance? Pop along to your local arena then, and find out f...

March 30 in the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, had the first performance of Edward Harper’s re-orchestration of Alan Rawsthorne’s cantata Kub...

Sir Colin Davis has been celebrating his 80th birthday in style, conducting Berlioz with the French National Orchestra, Gerontius in Boston...

Which opera by Richard Strauss has a text by Hoffmannsthal, a big soprano monologue to end act one, an important transvestite role and waltz...