Tag Archives: Najmiddin Mavlyanov

Top ten operas 2022

This was the year that opera houses got back to something approaching “normality” post-pandemic. It’s easy to forget that at the start of 2022, Covid restrictions were still very much in place: visiting Vienna in January, one needed proof of … Continue reading

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Rebel with a Rimsky cause: Dmitri Tcherniakov returns to the Bolshoi with Sadko

Rimsky-Korsakov: Sadko Bolshoi Opera, 11th May 2020 When it comes to ruffling feathers at the Bolshoi, Dmitri Tcherniakov has form. It was in 2006 that his radical approach to Eugene Onegin caused Galina Vishnevskaya to declare she would never set … Continue reading

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Comic strip Trovatore a damp squib at the Royal Opera

Verdi: Il trovatore ** The Royal Opera, 4th December 2016 “Do you really want to see Trovatore on the stage with that story? Really?!” exclaimed Antonio Pappano to me recently. I can’t be sure the Music Director of the Royal … Continue reading

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Firing blanks: a disappointing Tosca at Covent Garden

Puccini: Tosca ** The Royal Opera, 11th January 2016 Nothing sweeps away the Christmas excess of multiple Nutcrackers like the biting chords denoting the villainous Baron Scarpia at the start of Tosca. I have a sneaking fondness for Puccini’s ‘shabby … Continue reading

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