Opera Review
Tawdry tales
The Tales of Hoffmann, Royal Opera House
Good, mostly clean, fun
The Boys from Syracuse, Upstairs at the Gatehouse
A full Platée
A daring production of a daring work
Loony tunes
Opera begs leave to celebrate lunacy in a different way
Making art of the Holocaust
As dramatic opera, The Passenger inhabits a grey zone of guard–prisoner relations
Off with the fairies
Unsurprisingly, the most brilliant of all English music-theatre pieces are mostly overlooked
Operettas for the apocalypse
As we career merrily ever deeper into the end-times, what is the appropriate soundtrack for civilisational collapse?
Divine trickery
Jephtha, Royal Opera House
Passionate subjectivity
La traviata, ENO, Coliseum
High-octane despair
Das Rheingold, Royal Opera House
Keir’s comms catastrophe
Labour’s goal is clear but its messaging is anything but
Dark lessons from Canada
Once “assisted dying” is legal, the boundaries of what is permissible expand
We have to rebalance civil society
To influence power, we must organise
The shame of the Oxford Union
A debate on Israel and Palestine was a disgrace
Who are the Scottish Conservatives?
The election of Russell Findlay to lead the Scottish Conservatives reveals a party that doesn’t know what it stands for
Fabian fry-up
After last night’s disco, a very hungover conference is ready for a hearty plate of social democracy
A passionate battler for buildings
A manichaean choice between the organic adaptation of old buildings and the beauty of the new
Why the Democrats cannot be populists
It goes against the managerial nature of the party
Killing democracy to save it?
The annulling of the first round of the Romanian presidential elections should concern us all
Hatred without end
A year on from October 7th, mutual dehumanisation and refusal of moral responsibility characterises our “debate” over the Gaza war
Why is the BBC so obsessed with drag?
Incessant coverage of drag shows and drag queens has become something of a running joke
