by Paul E. Robinson

While opera fans are notoriously old-fashioned when it comes to stage directors bringing overarching new ideas to their favourite works, it is clear that if opera is going to have any future, it must be open to creative re-thinking.
Wieland Wagner successfully updated his grandfather’s “Ring” cycle at Bayreuth in the 1950s, and [...]

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Review by Paul E. Robinson
After more than 150 years, “Rigoletto” remains a powerful opera. The characters continue to resonate through the ages because of the universality of their situations and their all too human qualities. In a now legendary production for the English National Opera in 1983, director Jonathan Miller moved the opera from Sixteenth [...]

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Review by Paul E. Robinson

Over the years opera has developed a reputation for telling stories that are too often silly, risible or incomprehensible, and sometimes all three at once. As we settle into the twenty-first century most managers of opera companies have faced up to this problem, and to the fact [...]

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