29 stories by "Guy Withers"
For the past three weeks I have been working to develop the role of Prince Aiden in Mahogany Opera Group’s newest operatic adventure for children, The Rattler. I feel very lucky to be …
A sold-out Barbican Hall welcomed Kodo for an anniversary performance and premiere in one. The Taiko Performing Arts Ensemble celebrates 35 years of worldwide touring since bursting onto the…
Collaboration in theatre only makes for stronger artistic productions. Through sharing ideas with others, engaging other artists and companies with unique skills sets, and recognising artist…
Though composed after The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart’s dramma-giocoso masterpiece, Rossini’s Barber of Seville is the first in Beaumarchais trilogy of plays. It’s enduring …
This, the first revival of Kasper Holten’s Don Giovanni, is a production full of visual spectacle. His ability to pull the spectator’s focus with lighting design and choreographe…
Puccini’s La Bohème is a mini masterpiece. It’s concise and relatively short by operatic standards, but also fulfils the criteria of some gorgeous arias and ensembles that in th…
Bizet’s Carmen is one of the most well known pieces of classical music, let alone operas, of all time. Everyone has heard Escamillo’s ‘Toreador Song’, and with the ov…
In contrast to Krol Roger, Kasper Holten’s production also running at ROH this season, everyone at least knows of Verdi’s La Traviata, and especially this production. It is one o…
Mike Leigh, celebrated film director and self-proclaimed Gilbert & Sullivan fan, leads English National Opera’s latest venture into the world of G&S. The Pirates of Penzance is…
Szymanowski’s short but gripping opera Król Roger comes to the Royal Opera House for the first time. Composed in 1926, the work has only begun to be programmed by major opera hou…
Following a year of severe financial problems and with an inability to fill London’s largest theatre, it is perhaps unsurprising that English National Opera’s 2015/16 season is a…
As the Rossini biographer Stendhal puts it, “Rossini is always amusing, Mozart never; Mozart is like a mistress who is always serious and often sad, but whose very sadness is a fascina…
It’s a change for me to see something at the Royal Opera House that is not an opera or a ballet, albeit in the Linbury Studio Theatre. First performed in Basel in 2013, King Size is th…
In recent months, the new productions mounted by the Royal Opera House have come under some heavy criticism, and the much revived and traditional productions praised again and again – …
Pop-Up Opera presents one of Mozart’s lesser performed operas, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, in the unconventional setting of Peter Kime’s oriental antique store in Bloomsbury.…
Firstly, I was so glad to see so many children and young people at the performance, albeit brought by their wealthy parents. The Magic Flute still reigns as the first pick for an introductio…
Having survived weeks of great financial turmoil, and having now finally secured funding for the next couple of years (though under strict guidelines and restrictions) the English National O…
The Moscow City Ballet is a touring company mainly based in the UK, with a sister company focusing specifically on the continent named MCB Europe. Its aim is to bring ballet to the masses, w…
Un Ballo in Maschera is a tricky and confusing piece. It contains some of Verdi’s most sparkling and electric music but at the same time it’s wrapped around an awkward and melodr…
The Suicide Girls Blackheart Burlesque show is quite a saucy affair. The Suicide Girls are an online community, featuring pin-up photography of alternative female models, and has a large fol…
Shakespeare’s plays, Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, are more two halves of one play than two separate works in and of themselves. Part 1 feels just the beginning of the story, as Hal starts…
“Monsieur Wagner has good moments, but awful quarters of an hour!”, penned Rossini in a letter to a friend. I agree, to a certain extent. Wagner’s radical compositional con…
Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas have been a staple of the theatre repertoire "Â amateur and professional "Â since they were first performed at the end of the nineteenth century. S…
In a year that has seen funding in the arts cut across the board, it has become increasingly difficult to justify the £26 million annual Arts Council grant awarded to the Royal Opera Hous…
The intention of immersive theatre is to transport the audience member into another world, not just as a passive bystander but as a part of the action, no matter how small. Site-specific and…
