Opera Review
Hot cinders
Cinderella, English National Opera
Tosca without terror
Tosca, Royal Opera
Me and my gull
Seagull: True Story, Marylebone Theatre
The weird and wonderful fringe
Seek delights in vain at our main companies, but the fringe lets them gambol free
Mad for it
A review of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Opera Holland Park
Wagner saga just keeps on giving
Richard Wagner, it appears, had Nazism thrust upon him
Bum deal
The Queen of Spades, Garsington
Domesticating Wagner
A new production of Die Walküre is at odds with its music
Family matters
Jephtha, Il Pomo d’Oro, Barbican
Dogme drama Festen adapted for stage
How gratuitous would everyone would have found this if the film had never existed?
Most Read
A shameful Bill
Labour is spectacularly failing the British people on immigration
The hitch with the Hitch
How Christopher Hitchens brought me back to Christ
The ties that bind
A revived society tie has raised thousands for hedgehogs — and reminds us what Britain has lost with the decline of the club tie
Going Green
A day out with Zack Polanski and friends
Against Northernism
“Northernism” is a superficial form of cultural branding, not a serious political project
The centre-left is out of ideas
The new journal Arguably barely makes an argument
When all you have is a Hermer
Why Lord Hermer is a strange fit as Attorney General
Clarifying the fog of the gender wars
Michael Foran’s new book will undoubtedly be celebrated, but is it essential?
Eat less chicken
Industrial farming is bad for the environment but it is also cruel
Wilde times at the country house
Gerald Barry’s outrageous The Importance of Being Earnest manages to overmatch the virtuoso original
The name game
Nominative determinism is a rich seam to be mined in sport
The summer chill
Cool soups for hot days
Auntie’s autumn
Rather than wage war on the Beeb, a Reform government should strip it of its monopoly and force British broadcasting to compete again
Why must everything move to Manchester?
Northern England is being framed in patronising reductionist terms
Crushing the real progressives
The Islamic Republic of Iran, now under fire from the demonic West, is the most progressive society on earth
It’s what you Makerfield of it
Andy Burnham may yet stop Reform, but victory would raise almost as many questions for Labour as defeat.