Opera
Off with the fairies
Unsurprisingly, the most brilliant of all English music-theatre pieces are mostly overlooked
Singers have a voice, too
Study of the Western canon is often reduced to a politicised debate: power and patronage versus individual genius. The truth is far more complex
Operettas for the apocalypse
As we career merrily ever deeper into the end-times, what is the appropriate soundtrack for civilisational collapse?
The geopolitical prescience of Handel
On opera’s flirtation with current affairs
Art does not exist to improve society
We should resist the cultural reductionism of the modern “creative industries”
Missing the point
Why opera needs fictional dead women
Why do we persist with Opera?
Dependent on state subsidies, artistically ossified and only a few go to see it
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
Common prayer
Britain, and her monarchy, have a language fitted for times of joy and sorrow alike — so why does the Church of England make such poor use of our traditional liturgy?
Synaesthesia
Robert Thicknesse, Lucy Lethbridge, and Yehuda Shapiro return for a mind bending and spirit expanding episode of Critical Mash
How to mainline true crime
People are tuning in for entertainment, not pure information
Pen pusher
My fascination with fountain pens
Tragicomedy at the UN
The limp United Nations cannot be trusted to support the victims of tyranny
The unromantic truth about tortured poets
Taylor Swift is idealising the grim realities of the lives of poets
The grand tour
Sex and the cities
Decolonising science
Rewritten histories of science, outdated religious shibboleths and notorious omissions
Four women seers in a time of strife
Eilenberger’s design is to present philosophy outside the lecture theatre in its life-transforming power
My husband and Zoe
Claudia Savage-Gore is irked by her man’s latest obsession
The Roman Republic is worth thinking about
The life and death of Tiberius Gracchus illustrate the virtues of populism
