Moving beyond the text
La Clemenza di Tito, Geneva
Shock of the new
People are terrified of modernity’s great gift: the sudden freedom to make appalling noise, says Robert Thicknesse
Cheer leaders
Opera unswervingly believes in the potential for a divine spark in humans, says Robert Thicknesse
Do not go gently
Opera has treated the subject of cancelling the pleasures of others in some depth
How about some vistas of beauty?
Covent Garden’s first post-lockdown offering is in a long, grim tradition
Sex tips from Semele
Opera was the tinder of Renaissance Venice, says Robert Thicknesse
A grim chorus of philistines
Rishi’s £1.57 Billion handout to the arts sector is the last good news it’ll ever hear, says Robert Thicknesse
To the streets, via the Crush Bar
Robert Thicknesse on Opera
An opera critic in lockdown
The critic, like a used-up traveller in ladies’ corsetry in a Fifties film, is enjoying a happy furlough
Wildest dreamland
It’s the perfect medium for the End Times, unequalled in its devotion to doom
The problem with Rachel Reeves’s pension pretensions
Bigger funds are not the key to effective investments
Don’t idolise Roger Scruton
Our reverence for the late thinker must not limit our imaginations
Humble pie?
Ric Holden is painfully aware that he is only just Holden on to his seat
Anti-industrial strategy
Manufacturing has been systematically devastated by successive governments
The problem with EDI
Equality, diversity and inclusion policies are constraining free thought and dividing people
The public sector must reform or die
Too big to fail? It is too big to succeed
Megalomania
Megalopolis is a gaudy, self-indulgent mess
How Roman women were victimised twice
The victims of abuse could also be degraded by historians
More than just noise
Berg, Schoenberg, Webern: Piano works (Warner)
Labour’s favourite banker
Questions can be asked about the relationship between the Labour Party and Anthony Watson
With Conservative friends like these…
The Tories have kept elevating their own ideological opponents
