On Opera
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.
Proper pro opera
Fun with fear and failure
Freak shows
Horrors wrestled into being
Spring to life
April in London has a number of operatic things that look kind of fun
Going for a song
In true bel canto, the only important thing is the voice, the song
Hatred and mental illness are not mutually exclusive
Violent men being mentally ill need not make broader societal phenomena irrelevant
Could it be magic?
Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa by Anthony Grafton
How we killed ideas and kept impressions
We have to rediscover ideas and not just the idea of ideas
Murders for April
April is the cruellest month, breeding detective fiction out of the dry land
The curious case of the “Gaylor” affair
Whatever the framing, the sexuality is the story
Parents are being hypocritical about smartphones
Yes, kids use their phones too much, but what about adults?
Fire and ice
Klopp is the air-punching booming-laugh extrovert; Guardiola the turtleneck-wearing, obsessively professorial introvert
Liz Truss was right but naive
She grasped the scale of Britain’s plight but misunderstood the nature of power
Snook dazzles as Dorian Gray
Wilde’s preoccupation with beauty and artifice brings a sassy Victorian immorality tale into our own times
A sound of Rowling thunder
Scotland’s government and police seem determined to turn themselves into a laughing stock
A Labour of unrequited love
It will take more than vague apologetic gestures to redeem the Labour Party
