Opera
Love, death and drink
Does inspiration really come out of a bottle?
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
A captivating northern star
If Lise Davidsen sneezes, the opera world shuts down
Good, mostly clean, fun
The Boys from Syracuse, Upstairs at the Gatehouse
Butchering La bohème
Opera is “relatable” already
What is behind the ECHR debate?
We should stop pretending that moral disagreements can be reduced to technical debates
The authorities are inept sheriffs of social media
Politicians, the police and the judiciary should stop trying to control a landscape they do not understand
Smacking harms children
Smacking didn’t harm you? Maybe this debate isn’t for you
Progressive realism
Can Labour’s new foreign policy doctrine work in our troubled world?
Cardinal win
Conclave is a political drama and a closed-room mystery rolled into one
Dress code
How did Starmer not know how it would look? (The donation, not the clothes)
Religion without mercy
Progressivism has all the zeal of Christianity, but none of its emphasis on forgiveness
The half-forgotten promise of the Jubilee Line
The London Underground line points the way towards a better future
Nigel’s knees-up
Can Reform become a serious contender for power?
How the West fell out of love with mass migration
Restrictionist opinion is breaking through the establishment cordon sanitaire
Bonfire of the verities
Plotting a path through the new politics
