Opera
Wagner, restless provocateur
Wagner’s sexual ambiguity spoke to Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley and Thomas Mann, says Norman Lebrecht
Met with disappointment: a quiet season for postmodern New York
Manhattan’s cultural landscape faces more tough times ahead with the cancellation of the Met’s 2020/2021 season
A grim chorus of philistines
Rishi’s £1.57 Billion handout to the arts sector is the last good news it’ll ever hear, says Robert Thicknesse
To the streets, via the Crush Bar
Robert Thicknesse on Opera
An opera critic in lockdown
The critic, like a used-up traveller in ladies’ corsetry in a Fifties film, is enjoying a happy furlough
The welcome sound of silence
For three days I listened to nothing but birdsong, marvelling at the variety and the volume
Wildest dreamland
It’s the perfect medium for the End Times, unequalled in its devotion to doom
Men beware women
How we underestimate the women in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte
Less austerity, more pizazz
Grand opera was long thought quite dead but is suddenly rearing its shaggy head again
Therapy is making children ill
What would really help children’s mental health is talk about resilience
Deer prudence
It’s time for a change of attitude to wild British venison
Artistic freedom is worth the risk
Arts Council England’s revised guidance offers cause for concern over freedom of expression
The lies of Sinn Fein
Sectarian smears against Unionists have been exposed as the falsehoods they always were. Will anyone bother to say sorry?
Explaining the “gender pay gap”
It does not exist — or, at least, not as you might have thought
Why we should resist this “conversion therapy” ban
It would enshrine dubious claims as unarguable facts, and it endangers freedom and young people
Return of the referendum?
More direct democracy could be Europe’s only means of restoring political legitimacy
Intellectual property
Property: The Myth that built the World by Rowan Moore
Murders for February
Hitler, Harlem and the high-life feature in this month’s murder mystery haul
13 Years Later
Who could be inspired by this zombie conservatism?
Scratches in the stonework of history
A new history of graffiti and rebellion is less light and bawdy than one may have expected
