Opera
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
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.
An effortful opera
A fun but difficult production of Il Trovatore
Proper pro opera
Fun with fear and failure
The far enemy
The motivations for the 9/11 attacks are still misunderstood and moralised
The fables of Davos Man
Yuval Noah Harari has written another long book with little wisdom
The danger of naive humanitarianism
The rejection of force is complacent and unsustainable
Action Tom
Can Tom Tugendhat MP resolve his vibes problem?
The future that never came
Post-war London was saved from a modernist masterplan
Developing nations will be forced to choose
Sitting on the fence between China and the USA is unsustainable
The British state is failing to protect women
Misogyny, rape and sectarian violence go increasingly unchallenged in the UK
Kemi Badenoch has a problem with the truth
From wokeness, to housing, to immigration her words don’t match the facts
Gothic staging
The Turn of the Screw, Coliseum
Roger Scruton’s naive nationalism
Cultural nationalism is an ill-fitting model for the modern nation state
A matter of life and death
It is not the job of judges to tell someone that they are wrong for believing in life
