Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Mozart and Da Ponte’s The Marriage of Figaro is an exuberant, near-flawless marriage of music and words, and of matters complex and
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 12:48PMFriday, February 28, 2020
In Denis and Katya, receiving its UK premiere with Music Theatre Wales, composer Philip Venables and librettist/director Ted Huffman address one of
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 08:54AMMonday, February 24, 2020
The Marriage of Figaro was premiered in febrile times, in 1786, on the eve of the French Revolution. Emperor Joseph II had
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 11:56AMMonday, October 14, 2019
Janacek was approaching 70 when he composed The Cunning Little Vixen, yet the opera brims with youthful vigour, optimism and music-dramatic innovation.
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 01:00PMWednesday, October 9, 2019
Welsh National Opera first unveiled James Macdonald’s Rigoletto in 2002. At the time, set in a Kennedy-era White House, its portrayal of
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 11:55AMMonday, June 10, 2019
When Jake Heggie’s opera Dead Man Walking premiered in the US in 2000, it intensified the national debate about capital punishment. Based
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 08:35AMThursday, May 30, 2019
“What’s occurrin’?” Director-librettist Daisy Evans brings a Barry Island vernacular style to her gleefully anarchic production for Welsh National Opera. She and
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 10:16AMWednesday, March 13, 2019
It’s 30 years since Mid Wales Opera first set out to bring fully staged chamber productions to small, rural communities – and
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 11:47AMMonday, March 4, 2019
At his best, Donizetti is a wonderful exponent of the romanticism that emerged in early-1800s Italy, a particularly febrile period in operatic
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:08AMMonday, February 18, 2019
When censors forbade the onstage depiction of regicide, Verdi was forced to relocate his 1859 Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball)
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 12:37PMOnly Mozart could so deftly have celebrated the Age of Enlightenment through an opera spanning moral philosophy, high drama, fairytale romance –
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 11:26AMTuesday, November 13, 2018
There are many layers of wit and sophistication to Ravel’s 1911 first opera, L’heure Espagnole. Short but brilliantly inventive, on the one
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 11:53AMTuesday, October 9, 2018
When Stendhal heard La Cenerentola a few years after its 1817 premiere he branded it trivial and vulgar. Post-French Revolution, Rossini’s noisy
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 09:20AMSunday, September 30, 2018
A hundred years since the end of World War One – the war supposedly to end all wars – armed conflicts around
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:56PMMonday, September 24, 2018
It’s hard to overstate the social radicalism for its time of Verdi’s La Traviata. Even today, over 160 years since its 1853
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 11:39AMMonday, September 17, 2018
Under director Kully Thiarai, National Theatre Wales is sharpening its resolve to be a people’s theatre. Tide Whisperer, a new site-specific work
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 10:42AMThanks to its gargantuan forces – with more than 60 named roles and a vast chorus reflecting its epic novel forbear –
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 09:18AMMonday, June 11, 2018
It’s an understatement that Viscountess Rhondda, Margaret Haig Mackworth (née Thomas), has suffered historical neglect. A pioneering Welsh suffragette and businesswoman; a
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 08:44AMTuesday, May 29, 2018
Opera may have a reputation in the UK for being ‘toffee-nosed and corporate’ but the genre is blossoming across the country. Steph
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 07:30AMMonday, March 19, 2018
With its mile-a-minute patter, and more visual gags than you can shake a tickling stick at – Imogen Garner’s Berta wields a
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 01:38PMWhen Eugene Onegin premiered in 1879, it was at the Moscow Conservatory rather than a prestigious opera house, and with a student
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 10:04AMMonday, February 26, 2018
It’s ironic that Welsh National Opera have revived director John Caird’s Don Giovanni at this juncture in their history: in 2011, the
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 08:04AMFriday, November 24, 2017
The Torch Theatre has been servicing west Wales and further afield with classic and new theatre for 40 years. Artistic director Peter
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 12:12PMTuesday, November 7, 2017
It should be no surprise that Thomas Ades, arch modern-day composer of parody and social satire, has expressed deep admiration for the
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 11:37AMMonday, October 23, 2017
Ten years before she was finally appointed the first ever woman poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy turned myth and history on their
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:31AMMonday, October 9, 2017
Notes from the House of the Dead, Dostoyevsky’s semi-autobiographical account of life in a Siberian prison camp, might seem the starkest of
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 10:47AMMonday, October 2, 2017
“Something is weighing me down.” Pushkin’s final words, uttered from his deathbed following a catastrophic duel, might equally apply to his eponymous
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 08:54AMMonday, September 25, 2017
How many frequenters of Chinese restaurants bother to think about the lives of the people preparing their food? In The Golden Dragon,
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 09:46AMMusorgsky’s mighty historical epic, Khovanshchina, is eloquent in the very sprawl of its design. Left unfinished at his untimely death, the opera
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:22AMMonday, July 31, 2017
Gluck’s 1762 Orfeo ed Euridice offers a fascinating journey into the psychology of time – not least in that its composer looked
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 12:56PMMonday, June 5, 2017
Premiered in 1911, Der Rosenkavalier was a remarkable stylistic volte-face by Richard Strauss, eschewing previous dissonant extremes for a sumptuous romance steeped
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 12:50PM 
