The geopolitical prescience of Handel
On opera’s flirtation with current affairs
Divine trickery
Jephtha, Royal Opera House
Passionate subjectivity
La traviata, ENO, Coliseum
Missing the point
Why opera needs fictional dead women
Content warning
On triggering opera and Arts Council England
High-octane despair
Das Rheingold, Royal Opera House
Bad-boy opera
Tosca, Grand Opera House, Belfast
The cat in a hat
A colourful glimpse into a dramatic feast of sex and death
Why it’s time to drop Don Giovanni
Mariame Clément’s new production of Don Giovanni falls prey to modern mores.
A passionate battler for buildings
A manichaean choice between the organic adaptation of old buildings and the beauty of the new
The downfall of the podcast-industrial complex
How did some of our finest podcasters get the election so wrong?
If Donald Trump wins, it’s over
Three assassination attempts prove irrefutably that Trump is guilty of inciting violence
The hollowness of postliberalism
Its vagueness and sentimentality encourage political opportunism
Now’s your time, House of Lords
The upper house must prove its worth by opposing the shabby Chagos Islands deal
With Conservative friends like these…
The Tories have kept elevating their own ideological opponents
Two cheers for pedestrianisation
Pedestrianisation cannot solve all of Oxford Street’s problems
Explaining reality to Ed Miliband
You can’t ban baking and eat cake
White male conservatives for identity politics
Kemi Badenoch’s supporters should have fewer illusions
The coming of age
On the anxieties and ambiguities of adulthood
Keir’s woetanical garden
Labour still don’t understand the scale of the reforms that are needed
