Opera Now

Opera Now captures the drama, colour and vitality of one of the most powerful of all the performing arts, showcasing the creative spirit of opera both on stage and behind the scenes. In addition, our 32-year magazine archive is now available to subscribers to our ‘digital’ and ‘print & digital’ packages, allowing you to explore more than 270 issues of opera history.

OperaNow

France takes centre stage

READERS’ LETTERS

NEWS & NOTES

A great knight out • Sir Bryn Terfel is about to embark on a major national tour around the United Kingdom taking in venues from Scotland to the south coast of England. The tour will help define him as a British artist, he says – and it will be chance to have some fun

Fit for a King • Opera and music are thriving once more at the Palace of Versailles, which is presenting a 2022/23 season of performances that promises to be one of the liveliest in France. We take a look at some of the highlights…

Elsewhere in Paris this season…

A mezzo on her mettle • Marina Viotti is a remarkable artist, with a fine, flexible, natural mezzo soprano voice that encompasses opera, jazz and metal. Having rediscovered her roots as a classical musician, she is taking the opera world by storm, while remaining free to mix and match her astonishing range of vocal styles

Love, ancient and modern • Five years and a pandemic after his last work for the stage, John Adams returns to opera with the Shakespeare-inspired Antony and Cleopatra, commissioned by San Francisco Opera and receiving its world premiere there this month

In search of a lost Princess • Opera Rara is reviving an Offenbach rarity, La Princesse de Trébizonde, in a new critical edition pieced together by way of some intriguing musicological detective work and soon to be performed in London

Six of one • Francis Muzzu chooses his half-dozen favourite recordings of Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann

Unleashing a storm • Francesco Cilluffo conducts Fromental Halévy’s longlost Shakespearean opera La tempesta at Wexford Festival Opera next month. He explains the painstaking process that has gone into bringing the work back to the stage

Buxton International Festival

The Grange Festival

Garsington Opera

Nevill Holt

Dorset Opera Festival

Longborough Festival Opera

MONDONVILLE Titon et l’Aurore

Les Talens Lyriques

Japan

New releases

Spotlight Sept – Oct 2022

My favourite things • The acclaimed Canadian-born soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan, 51, is known for her fearless performances of 20th-century and contemporary operas. She is the Lulu of her generation in Alban Berg’s opera, and her recent performances of conducting and singing Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine are testament to her astonishing energy, versatility and daring as a musician. She lives in Paris

The Opera Now Quiz • Do you know your Puccini from your Ponchielli? Test your wits in this month’s set of fiendish questions for the dedicated opera buff (with a clue or two in the pictures)