On Opera
Tawdry tales
The Tales of Hoffmann, Royal Opera House
Booze or muse?
Composers have been no slouches when it comes to the sauce
Gothic staging
The Turn of the Screw, Coliseum
Why can’t there be more vampires?
Bloodsucking, in various more or less metaphorical guises, is after all opera’s happiest place
Less than the sum of its parts
Eugene Onegin, Royal Opera
Borientalism
Madama Butterfly, Opera Ballet Flanders, Antwerp
Magic moments
A bomb dropped into the frightful world of mid-Victorian musical entertainment
A full Platée
A daring production of a daring work
Gelding: the pros
Bring back the castratos? Might as well
Revolution in the air
Andrea Chénier, Royal Opera House
Defend the bishops’ bench
Removing the Lords Spiritual from the House of Lords would be constitutional vandalism
How the Tories can win again
The new leader of the Conservatives must reach an important, ignored sector
What is Toryism for?
What has it done if it has not made a system it wishes to defend?
Murders for October
Tales from the gothic to the macabre
British universities should stop using foreign students as a crutch
Its short-term benefits are obvious but it is not a long-term solution
The fading fumes of the New Right
None of the Tory candidates offer the chance of an ideological makeover
Improvement and impoverishment
Urban life from the poorhouse to the public house
You were warned
Badenoch’s election means bad news for the Tories
The right-on, left-wing oppressors
A flaw in the design of academic studies makes the Left appear less authoritarian than the Right
End of the Long Peace?
Our technological and institutional sophistication will not eliminate conflict
Oasis: the good boys of rock and roll
For guitar bands since punk, there’s been a tension between credibility and success
