Venice Biennale Musica review – things old, new, borrowed and bleurgh
The contemporary music strand of the Italian festival brought a typically elegant and thoughtful music theatre work by Michel van der Aa; less successful was Yvette Janine Jackson’s ‘radio opera’ Left Behind
July 2021
Louis Andriessen: six of the best
The Dutch composer, whose death was announced yesterday, wrote propulsive scores inspired not just by jazz and pop – but film, literature and art
September 2017
Festivals 2017
Lucerne festival 2017 review – Chailly, Gardiner, Monteverdi et al
Lucerne has identity on its mind, and delights including Riccardo Chailly and his La Scala band and John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi tour
June 2016
Theatre of the World review – an operatic journey through a Bosch-like world
Dazzling performances in this new theatre piece about a Jesuit polymath bring Louis Andriessen’s exhilarating soundworld to life
January 2016
Sydney festival 2016
Kate Miller-Heidke: opera's former 'bratty upstart' tackles a tragic Australian story
The Rabbits co-creator and star on the challenge, ‘as a whitey’, of staging the Shaun Tan-John Marsden story of colonialism, and the ‘huge onus’ to do it justice
September 2014
Roderick Williams on the Last Night of the Proms: ‘Maybe I should dress as Britannia and wave a Jamaican flag’
Baritone Roderick Williams will perform to a global audience of millions on Saturday. He’s going to have a ball, he tells Imogen Tilden
April 2013
Sunken Garden; Nabucco; Mark Padmore & Graham Johnson – review
Sunken Garden - review
Music blog
André de Ridder: together in electric dreams
ENO: Sunken Garden, second trailer - video
March 2013
David Mitchell and Michel van der Aa on Sunken Garden
ENO: Sunken Garden trailer - video
The Rest Is Noise festival
Soprano Barbara Hannigan: 'Where's the crazy stuff?'
Charlotte Higgins on culture
With George Benjamin's Written on Skin, British opera takes a bold step into the future
February 2013
David Mitchell: 'I don't want to project myself as this great experimenter'
David Mitchell never imagined his novel Cloud Atlas, with its labyrinth of interlocking stories, could be adapted for the screen. So what made him entrust Hollywood with the challenge, asks Stuart Jeffries
October 2012
Damon Albarn kickstarts ENO's 'undress for opera' scheme
Damon Albarn and Terry Gilliam launch ENO's new audience expansion scheme to attract younger audience to art form that many consider 'too stuffy, too posh, too expensive'
April 2012
English National Opera's new season includes controversial Disney story
Fictionalised account of animator's life, one of nine new productions to be staged by the company, will present a 'nightmarish' vision of Walt Disney
March 2011
The Return of Ulysses; A Magic Flute; Kommilitonen!; Up-Close – review
Amsterdam Sinfonietta – review
February 2011
Van der Aa: Spaces of Blank; Mask; Imprint – review
Michel van der Aa's first two discs on his own recording imprint are an impressive attack on musical conventions, writes Andrew Clements
