A Surreal Double Bill: Larmes de couteau and Full Moon in March at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Blue, written by Tony Award winning composer Jeanine Tesori and librettist Tazewell Thompson, sees a tragedy occur against the backdrop of a clash between a father and son and the way in which black people are treated in society at large. Set in Harlem in 2007 it sees a black Mother and Father have a Son, all of whom are only ever referred to by those names. As soon as The Mother even tells her friends she is pregnant, they tell her there is no future for black boys because of the...

Georg Friedrich Handel’s Arminio, with a libretto by Antonio Salvi that had previously been set to music by Alessandro Scarlatti, was not a great hit when it premiered on 12 January 1737 at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. Despite the composer’s output being as prolific as ever, this was not an easy time for him as he was competing for audiences with the rival Opera of the Nobility when there was really not enough potential audience in London to support two houses. Although...

Nadine Sierra was the big winner on the opening night of Manon. Her voice is at its best, splendid. The high notes are easy, well timbred, and brilliant. The dynamic control is of great quality and the projection of the singing, without being magnificent, is fully satisfactory. The exhaustive technical control of breathing and emission allows her to sing naturally and with and ease, without apparent physical effort and without dropping in performance over the course of a show lasting...

Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence, which is currently enjoying its UK premiere at the Royal Opera House, is one opera where it does not pay to read the synopsis in advance. In most instances, the advantage of having some prior knowledge of what to look out for outweighs the disadvantage of any surprises being spoilt, but that is not the case here. This is because it is an opera in which we are constantly learning new things as the drama unfolds, with some of the revelations being so...

Erich Korngold, who is more usually if somewhat unfairly associated with film scores, wrote Die tote Stadt at the age of 23. It is based on Georges Rodebach’s 1892 novel Bruges-la-Morte, which had already been turned into a play by the author. Korngold’s father Julius knew Siegfried Trebitsch, who had translated the latter into German, and Julius and Erich adapted the play into an opera, writing the libretto between them under the joint pseudonym of Paul Schott. Set in...

Philip Glass, who is recognised as one of the leading proponents of minimalism in the world today, has written over twenty-five operas, a total achieved by hardly any composer since the days of Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi. Three of these form the ‘portrait trilogy’, which focuses on pivotal figures in the fields of science, politics and religion respectively. Einstein on the Beach premiered in 1976, Satyagraha (about Mahatma Gandhi) followed in 1980, and then the triptych was...