Not mad for it
I Puritani, Royal Opera, Covent Garden
Wilde times at the country house
Gerald Barry’s outrageous The Importance of Being Earnest manages to overmatch the virtuoso original
Tasty tunes
The Chocolate Soldier, Opera della Luna, Wilton’s Music Hall
Digging for gold
La fanciulla del West, Opera Holland Park
Operatic satire is a Shaw thing
The old Art has an armoury of skunk-like defence mechanisms to keep the unwashed at bay
Restoration romps
Purcell, The Musical, OSO Arts Centre, Barnes
These violent delights
Pagliacci made the murder the true apex of the show
Jolly boating weather
The Gondoliers, English Touring Opera, Hackney Empire
Mass hysteria
Sancta, Flanders Opera, Antwerp
Sexy sisters and holy hotties
Less Sister Simper, more Attila the Nun
Most Read
Tame Impala fails to impress
unconquered by a
taste of Crusader food
Gary Stevenson is wrong about wealth taxes
The popular economist is irritating, but more importantly he is mistaken
What is wrong now was wrong before
Julia Gillard should not pretend that the “unintended consequences” of the gender debate were unknowable
Ethnic minorities are abandoning Labour
It is not just Muslim voters who have been abandoning the Labour Party
How to fix the economy
A repentant ex-financial trader tells all
The fateful road to the great dictators
Weimar Germany / Red Dawn Over China
Were we close to a revolution in 1926?
Nine Days in May / The Edge of Revolution
The art of statesmanship
An exhibition at the Wallace Collection shows how Britain’s greatest wartime leader found solace and satisfaction in painting
Sir David Attenborough at sea
RRS Sir David Attenborough is a ship worthy of the great man’s name
The end of anonymity?
The moral norms of the internet are being destroyed by zero sum politics
Soft competition
There are participation prizes to everyone at the Venice Biennale
A frozen war?
The US should put stubbornness aside and end the conflict with Iran
The (in)justice of the Equality Act
Far from guaranteeing equal treatment, the Equality Act has transformed Britain’s understanding of equality from individual rights to group identity
How the war wasn’t won
The Supreme Court judgment on sex and the Equality Act is still being opposed and undermined
Polish piano
Andre Tchaikowsky: Piano concertos (Ondine)
Stop ignoring the Islamisation of our democracy
The British state is bending to Islamism, not attempting to defeat it