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Articles by Gerald Malone
For opera delivered with vim, vigour and pizzazz, follow Proske
Tosca blew her brains out. Propped against a white tiled bathroom wall. Next to the toilet bowl. Blood splattered around with Quentin Tarantino generosity. Sleazy prison setting. The famous soprano still formally dressed in the spangly frock in which she had just delivered her last performance. A world of stark contrasts, boldly created. Already dead, to the thundering, closing Puccini chords she slowly slid to the floor. Leaving a horrific, tell-tale, oozing, trail of blood smeared on the wall.
Dido and Aeneas: Graham takes the Purcell favourite for an extended work-out
“Sing-Along-A-Dido”! Henry Purcell on steroids. Time to bulk up. His 1684 opera Dido and Aeneas, the first ever British opera, may be a wondrous artistic creation, closing with Dido’s Lament, a cert for a top ten rating in any Weepy of the Year competition. Snafu. It isn’t very long.
The Rake’s Progress: Glimmerglass pulls off this notoriously difficult opera
“I live neither in the past nor the future. I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow may bring forth. I only know what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve. And I serve it in all lucidity.” Thus, spake composer Igor Stravinsky explaining his career long development of musical style.
The Flying Dutchman: Borths conjures up a storm in this whirlwind opera
Life can be hell. Especially if you are captain of a Dutch fluyt, a three masted galleon of sorts, “The Flying Dutchman”. And make a wild wish to round the Cape of Good Hope in a storm. “I will sail on even if it takes to eternity.” Alexa being offline in the 17th century, on cue up pops Satan instead, grants the wish, but condemns you to sail the seas – for eternity - as a ghost ship. Someone has always been listening. Not just the Chinese on their Huawei routers. Good news for Cap’n Dutchman.
Weill-Ullmann double bill is an evocative opera pairing
The dead giveaway that something special was afoot in The Hague was the rail track extending from the stage into the café outside the auditorium, where a curious audience was gathering. Even before curtain up, the fourth wall separating audience from stage had been breached. During the performance it was to be smashed to smithereens. The occasion, a perfectly matched double bill.
Longborough delivers haunting interpretation of Debussy's only opera
In a hostile, otherworldly environment, disconnected from the planet earth most of us inhabit, a frightened girl is confronted by an unsupportive man. “Ne reculez pas! Ne reculez pas!”, “Don’t back down!” she intones. But he has backed down. And she bursts into tears.
The Met vs Deutsche Oper: both executed the Queen of Spades beautifully
She Came in Through the Bedroom Floor. Nitpicking cognoscenti Beatles fans will insist she came in through the bathroom window. Motivated by a crush on Paul McCartney, fan Diane Ashley broke into the singer’s St John’s Wood home and departed with looted memorabilia, providing the inspiration for track 13, She Came in Through the Bedroom Window, on The Beatles 1969 album, Abbey Road. Immortalised by that sleeve, the Fab 4 marching across a pedestrian crossing, minus Belisha beacons. Abbey Road NW8.
A Visit to Friends: Matthews and Boyd shoot the lights out in opera debut
The tell was buried in the final line, page 41, of the Aldeburgh Festival programme credits. A Visit to Friends, world premiere, composer Colin Matthews and libretto by author William Boyd. Dog handlers were involved. Not of itself unusual. But certainly promising. In Aida, there are sometimes elephant handlers. At Met performances of La bohème and Falstaff, invariably horse and donkey handlers. A herpetologist minding the ENO snake in Akhnaten.
Glyndebourne’s Parsifal is a travesty. No storyline goes unmauled
The opening bars of Richard Wagner’s final masterpiece, Parsifal, form a monophony. One single, long, musical line shorn of harmony and counterpoint. Totally unlike the brassy crash, bang wallop of the likes of Die Maestersinger, or Der fliegende Holländer. Wandering up and down the stave without resolution. Creating uncertainty. Parsifal, twenty years in gestation, was to be different. The crowning achievement of a stellar career.
Wahnfried: this Wagner reality saga outshines succession
Wahnfried: The Birth of the Wagner Cult, an opera by American Israeli composer Avner Dorman, had its UK premiere at Longborough Festival Opera on 27 May. It was a high-risk departure for the company, widely acknowledged as the Bayreuth of Britain. To forge that reputation over thirty years, Longborough has performed cutting-edge Wagner operas from a chicken shed in a hill fold in the Cotswolds. It had seemed, until now, a good plan to stage, well… operas by the great man.
Plum: a Wodehouse tribute that embraces all the elephants in the room
As Sir Stephen Fry, the MC – and so much more – of a lively team of talent, gathered to celebrate the life of literary giant Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, drew the evening’s organised riot at Wilton’s Music Hall to a close, he, then the whole cast turned to the stage and looked up. Projected across the arched space above was a huge black and white photo of Plum, his wife Ethel and a favourite dog. In a sylvan setting, possibly shot in the gardens of Lord Emsworth’s Blandings Castle.
Guth achieves the near-impossible for a Salome production: an anti-climactic ending
The ugliest horror. The most beautiful, uplifting music. The paradox of the final scene of Richard Strauss’ Salome when the dancer of the seven veils fulfils her ambition to kiss the red lips of Jochanaan, defies description. But I’ll give it a go! Too bad the lips are attached to Jochanaan’s severed head.
Antony and Cleopatra: Adams gives free rein to his sense of musical colour
They are mysteries as enigmatic as the characters at the centre of John Adam’s opera, Antony and Cleopatra, premiered at New York’s Metropolitan Opera on 12 September, already performed in San Francisco and Barcelona. Why, as usual, was the Met late to the party? And what took Adams on his epic voyage to Ancient Egypt and Rome? After all, the leading American composer of contemporary opera has crafted his reputation on a genre largely of his own creation.
Jephtha: DiDonato step back, welcome Storgè
Joyce DiDonato in Jephtha (via Oliver Hitzegrad) Dateline Wednesday 7 May: Deep in The Barbican bunker, London’s 1960’s concrete fall-out shelter dedicated to the arts, for Handel’s valedictory oratorio, Jephtha.
Roméo et Juliette set Berlioz’s creative fuse fizzing
“It’s an opera Jim, but not as we know it.” Trekkies, fans of the trans galactic adventures of James T Kirk, captain of the star ship USS Enterprise will recognise the cautionary voice of “Bones”, Dr Leonard McCoy, who could spot an alien composer at 100 parsecs. Roméo et Juliette, Hector Berlioz’ dramatic symphony of 1839, is an “opera” like no other. The topsy turvy composer who had taken Paris by storm with his demonic, narrative Symphonie Fantastique in 1830 was at it again.
Don Giovanni on Mars by the gloriously disruptive Barrie Kosky
Hot news! Perseverance Rover has found opera on Mars! Never mind boring, dodgy evidence of fossilised microbes in dried-up riverbed rocks. This was conclusive. Tenors, Baritones, Sopranos and Mezzos in plain sight, spotted stumbling across a rock-strewn, desolate Jezero Crater. Broadcast in real time HD to Vienna.
Leeds is an art song festival like no other
“Ee By Gum, Supp tha brew, and stop tha Mithering” It’s not often you’re shouted at by a hotel room wall. My Ibis hotel, in Leeds city centre wasn’t taking any prisoners. The Yorkshire dialect instructions in shouty three-foot script above the Espresso machine weren’t messing about. Even I, a“You'll have had yer tea,” relatively genteel Scot caught the drift. Time to appease “wall”. I discharged my part.
Staging Parsifal at Temple Church was a high-risk operatic paradox that paid off
The Holy Grail was unveiled in its rightful realm on Thursday 3 April. London. “The Temple Church proved to be a setting like no other for Wagner’s opera, Parsifal” - the words of Robin Griffith-Jones, The Reverend and Valiant Master of Temple. At the bustling legal heart of the city’s Inns of Court, the magnificent church, just off Fleet Street, with its Norman doorway dating back to 1162 and Round Church, the Chapter House of London’s Knights Templar, boasts a storied history.
John Law, the man who blew up the French economy
I want to introduce you to the most famous Scotsman of whom you’ve probably never heard. If played by Sean Connery in a biopic he would introduce himself thus.
Anna Bolena: Fridman is a mistress of the bel canto art form
A spotlight focused on Anna Bolena’s retreating back as she walked in passive dignity towards her executioner. Then, slowly narrowed until only the rear of the queen’s head crowned with flowing red locks were lit. Standing starkly against the dark stage. “Immolata una vittima è già!” (“Sacrificed, a victim already!”) whispered Rochefort, Smeton and Percy. They, also destined for the executioner’s head basket, were commenting on their very own preview.
This operatic rollercoaster ride is as engaging as any 21st-century Netflix drama
Aida, Giuseppe Verdi, Metropolitan Opera New York New Production, 27th March 2025 When the recently self-appointed chair of Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts decided to commission a new, follow up celebratory opera to mark the return of the Panama Canal to American corporate control, President Donald Trump was surprised to be told that Giuseppe Verdi was already dead. “Get me the great guy who wrote that beautiful opera, Aida, you know,about the opening of the Suez Canal.
Why you must see this stunningly moving film portrayal of Verdi’s La Traviata
La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, OperaGlass Works, Soho House, New York, 16th March 2025 It must take a lot to make Sigourney Weaver burst into tears. But OperaGlass Works – mission: to boldly go in opera where no company has gone before – managed it. The occasion was last Friday’s screening of Verdi’s La Traviata – the American premiere of OperaGlass Works’ latest filmed opera. A viewing at the groovy Soho House Screenroom, in New York’s Meat-Packing District. Very cool. Consider.
Oscars all round for Utah Opera’s Pagliacci
“This is the Opera”. On the morning of the opening night of Utah Opera’s Pagliacci – 1892, Ruggero Leoncavallo – I stood on the spot in Utah where on 24th July 1847 Brigham Young and his Mormon pioneers concluded their 111-day, 1,300-mile flight to freedom across the Rocky Mountains. In 1838, Missouri Governor, Lilburn Boggs passed the innocuous sounding Missouri Executive Order 44, a.k.a. the Mormon Extermination Order. Brutal summary, Mormons had to flee, or die where they lived.
Moby-Dick at the Met: an opera worthy of Melville's totemic novel
“Don’t call me Ishmael. Call me Greenhorn!” What? Composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer’s 2010 opera Moby-Dick, based on Henry Melville’s same name epic 1851 novel was off to a topsy turvy start. Rename the narrator. In the book some dub “the great American novel”, the iconic opening line, “Call me Ishmael”, is uttered by an innocent young lad, narrator of events which follow.
Guildhall School's production of Mansfield Park is a compelling joy
Tittle tattle travels fast. Even in Jane Austen’s prim and proper early 19th century world of Mansfield Park. No Instagram. The Bertram family gather round a scandal sheet to learn that their daughter, the recently married Mrs Maria Rushworth, has high tailed it from the Rushworth Wimpole Street établissement. Mr Rushworth abandoned and distraught.
The Melancholy of Resistance: a reminder not to ignore signs of societal decay
Watching Mark-André Dalbavie and Guillaume Métayer’s 2024 opera, The Melancholy of Resistance, a futuristic tale of a city succumbing to the forces of evil, was depressing enough. A circus of thugs rolls into town in a lorry, displaying an attraction. The carcass of an enormous whale. They are led by a mysterious three-eyed Prince, (never seen), who is set on taking over control of the city and terrorising the inhabitants.
Festen: a dysfunctional family opera that offers no closure
Festen. Celebration. Bad boy composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Lee Hall invite you to Denmark, to a party to celebrate Helge Klingefeldt’s 60th birthday. There was certainly a party atmosphere in the auditorium. Birthday cards on every seat. A welcome banner stretching above the stalls. Turned out it was to be the birthday party from hell.
La véstale in Paris: nail-biting, seat-gripping, jaw-dropping drama
When the grisly corpses of Roman hero general, Licinius, and his main squeeze, vestal virgin (virgin in a euphemistic sense) heroine, Julia, emerged bloodied, suspended and tightly trussed on a gantry stage right, the audience correctly guessed that someone had fiddled with Spontini’s happy ending to his 1807 opera, La véstale. Surely the lovers are meant to dance off, up the sunlit Palatine Hill, waving, marriage their destiny? It wasn’t to be.
Puccini's favourite opera in Bologna: Minnie was the star of the evening
When the first chords of Puccini’s opera set in the Californian gold rush – La fanciulla del West – rang out in Bologna you could be forgiven for thinking you had turned up at a Broadway musical. Drum roll, moody descending chords, then a blaze of lush violins in exciting, rising five-note phrases reaching an explosion of sound. Then, hang on! Puccini’s stolen Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Music of the Night song from his 1986 musical Phantom of the Opera.
La Traviata in Dresden: Emily Pogorelc is one to watch
Curtains for Violetta. In the final scene of Semperoper Dresden’s La Traviata, Violetta, Verdi’s tragic heroine, was to die alone. As she uttered her final, spoken words. “The spasms of pain have ceased! I feel reborn in me the strength That once was mine! I feel I'm coming back to life! Oh, joy!” Oops! Wrong. Self-diagnosis seldom works. She was unconventionally cut off from the stage action and the rest of the cast in swathes of red velvet.
Regents Opera: this is a serious Ring
“Seconds out!” York Hall - London’s Bethnal Green - is a celebrated boxing venue. In February and March, it will resound to a different battle cry. “Hojotoho!”. “And in the Blue Corner, Wotan” Round 1: Rheingold; Round 2: Die Walküre; Round 3: Siegfried; Round 4: Götterdämmerung. “And what’s this? Twilight for Wotan. Brünnhilde rides to the rescue.” Unlike normal York Hall fare the outcome is certain. Spoiler alert. Nothing less than the end of the world.
Opera jewels to look forward to in 2025
Snow’s up! Glitter’s gone. Rancid turkey leftovers binned. Not the mince pies, though. Still, we need cheering up. Petroc Trelawny’s BBC Radio 3 “Breakfast” back announcements have not moved on from season appropriate Schubert Winterreise scheduling. (Come on, Petroc, treat shivering listeners to occasional sun-basking winter relief. The glow of Richard Strauss’s bracing Alpine Symphony would counterbalance amber weather alerts nicely). This week, spare the shivers, think summer. Think opera festivals.
Die Frau ohne Schatten: this opera was made for the Met’s unique stage
If the squeals of little fish flying through the air, then sizzling in a frying pan – unborn children of the watching potential mother who refuses to bear them – seem an absurdist operatic turn-off, bear with me. Don’t tune out. Just yet. Fish are just one of many complex symbols illustrating the simple, utterly compelling story of Die Frau ohne Schatten.
Theodora at Teatro Real: Joyce DiDonato went down a bomb
Joyce DiDonato went down a bomb in Teatro Real Madrid’s Theodora. Actually, she made a bomb. Brown Semtex sticks, wirey colour-coded connector things, gaffer tape, handled with surgical gloves, all the while deftly manipulating pliers. With Julia Bullock helping out. What a pair of unlikely bomb makers. In town at the wonderful Spanish opera house for G F Handel’s Theodora, originally an oratorio written towards the end of his composing career.
Schnittke’s Life with an Idiot: a tragic and powerful parody of Russian political life
Great place Zürich. In the Opernhaus bar, before Alfred Schnittke’s rarely performed (that’s a bit of an understatement! - Ed.) opera, Life with an Idiot, just when you need one, up pops a cheery psychotherapist. To spare his blushes, let’s call him “M”. Psychotherapy was needed in Zürich last Friday night. The character of Idiot is monosyllabic. He can intone only one word “Ekh!” M is accompanied by the charming Madame M. Whose sister turns out to be a supernumerary in the production.
Damaged voices with the strength to walk towards the light
I shall never take my voice for granted again. The Sound Voice Project staged at The Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre tells in short operatic form the searing story of people who have lost theirs. Through devastating laryngeal cancer, Parkinson’s, or motor neurone disease. Only to find them again by summoning the courage to use restorative surgery – aimed at creating only a basic, husky voice - to sing out defiantly and with optimism. Sound advice.
Lucidity is a frank exploration of the power of music on memory
Lucidity. Clearly going to be different. Dave Eggar, cellist in the five-piece American Modern Ensemble orchestra wore a cap. The audience was seated on stage looking out. Eggar and his mates were in the stalls, looking in. One of those mates was Brandon Williams, percussionist, who seemed to have raided the Good Hands Drum Shop on West 30th Street and brought all the contents with him.
Rich Romanian opera heritage should be more widely shared
Two soldiers stood impassive guard outside Bucharest Opera House in the evening dusk. Could have been extras left over from last Christmas’s Nutcracker ballet. Immaculate red tunics, black General de Gaulle pill box hats, razor-creased white trousers gashed by wide, blood-crimson hash stripes, crossed white-gloved hands. They flanked a wide red carpet leading to seven shallow steps and the yellow, blue and red (colours of the Romanian national flag) illuminated opera house beyond.
Trump's victory was predicted by yours truly in February
Last night in New York, as the telling margins of Donald Trump’s victory unfolded on unbelieving CNN and cheerleading Fox, I commented to my fellow watcher, a longstanding friend, commentator, journalist and broadcaster of huge experience and stature: “I’m glad Kamala’s lost, but I’m sorry Trump’s won”.
This year, Wexford Festival Opera gave us theatre within theatre within theatre
As Pagliacci took his curtain call at the end of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s corpse-strewn masterpiece, his mum, immediately in front of me, plonk centre Row C in Wexford’s National Opera House, leapt to her feet, went nuts, whooping World Series halloos, waving her arms.
Ainadama: a nuclear blitz on the senses and a proud moment for Scottish Opera
Scottish Opera flew into Manhattan to mark the opening night of their co-production with New York’s Met of Argentinian composer, Osvaldo Golijov’s opera, Ainadamar. A proud moment for Scot Op. A co-pro with the Met is a resounding endorsement of the company’s artistic standing. Scottish government please note.
Faust at the COC: Amy Lane has made a successful deal with the opera-devil
I have always secretly fantasised that God occasionally wears a white top hat. At least on formal occasions, such as appearances on earth. In Toronto, she does. A Jesuit education tends to turn one against God, that familiar Rococo bearded gloomy smiter of the damned. A.k.a., any pupil who failed to construe Latin verse satisfactorily. Me. Was I surprised to discover God was a woman? Not really. Those Jesuits were wrong about most things. At least she seemed certain about her identity.
An intimate hour in Handel's old home
Stroll on! That’s Harry Bicket mooning around outside Handel’s House, 23 Brook Street, Mayfair. I had never seen the Artistic Director of The English Concert, the go-to ensemble for all things Handel, dressed in mufti. Surprised to learn he owns anything other than a white tie and tails or a smart tux. I’m there for a Monday Matinee, to be performed by the “inaugural cohort of The English Concert Fellowship”, a programme for recent or about-to-be graduates from music schools in the UK and the US.
The success of the International Opera Awards is intellectual rigour
“You are a criminal! Going to the opera house when Oktoberfest is downtown!” The black-tie ensemble was one tell. The destination, Prinzregententheater, might have been another. No beer and carnival for me. He should know. Munich taxi drivers know most things. Apart from the location of hotels about which they are vague. Indeed, the six I used during my short stay all seemed like superior beings. Gave the impression I should have been driving, with them entitled to lounge in the rear. Taxis?
Grounded at the Met: Tesori's score is wonderful
The Met orchestra struck up The Star-Spangled Banner. It is a venerated tradition to sing the American national anthem – adopted in the US as recently as 1931 – at the opening of the Met season. The Lincoln Center’s 3,800 capacity crowd rose as one and sang its heart out. Suddenly, behind me in the Dress Circle, it seemed the whole female section of Salt Lake City’s Mormon Tabernacle Choir had snuck in. At the first verse drama line, a real risk of being blown from Row C to the front stalls emerged.
Arnold Schoenberg's final Romantic masterpiece is an emotional blast
The stage of Teatro alla Scala Milan opera house is extended over the orchestra pit, even over the front stalls. Italy has been scoured from heel and toe south to the Alps for violinists, cellists, horn players, enough other brass to furnish a foundry, forests of woodwind, a complete backrow of thermo-nuclear percussion devices. And four dazzlingly gilded harps, standing pertly to attention.
OperaGlass Works’ production of La Traviata will create an unrivalled sense of intimacy
OperaGlass Works’ ambition is no less than to create a new genre of opera. Their upcoming film of La Traviata, Giuseppe Verdi’s 19 th century classic love story, set to be released this autumn, will not be an opera performance viewed through a lens from a distance. Their lens will be the channel to you, the audience, to whom singers will communicate directly, creating an unrivalled sense of intimacy. Selina Cadell and Eliza Thompson are the founders of London based OperaGlass Works.
Carlisle Floyd is the founding father of American Opera
“Ain’t it a Pretty Night?”. Well, last Tuesday was certainly a great day, when the Inbox pinged, delivering a version of that best-known same name aria from American composer Carlisle Floyd’s gutsy opera about social conflict in America’s rural deep south, Susannah. My resourceful New York collaborator, Wexford Opera Factory, schooled soprano, Katie Norchi, had sent her very own, hot-from-the-studio recording. If you want to blow your socks off, listen here, then hit the “Like” button and “Share”.
The Girl with the Hurricane Brain: Bowler's challenging climate opera is far from a dull lecture
Dame Imogen Cooper, perhaps the greatest living interpreter of Mozart, Schumann and Schubert’s piano works, once stated her artistic ambition succinctly: “Capture an audience through music and take it on a journey”. Exactly the achievement of British composer, Laura Bowler, with her mind bogglingly challenging opera, The Girl With The Hurricane Brain at this year’s Copenhagen Opera Festival.
Roxana's Oedipus Rex reaffirms Scottish Opera’s reputation for originality
Not so much “at” the opera. “In” the opera. Chumming with heroes, Oedipus, Jocasta, Creon, Tiresias, a well-intentioned shepherd, a community chorus, an irritating messenger, and an over-the-top Speaker. The Speaker provided a running commentary on Oedipus’s eye-popping antics. The venue? The National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.
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