Susan Bickley News

Glyndebourne's first ever production of Wagner's epic final opera Parsifal will be staged at Glyndebourne Festival 2025. Featuring a cast of nearly 200 performers and orchestra, this production will be a landmark moment in the company's 90 year history. 

This February, multi award-winning actress Juliet Stevenson makes a highly anticipated return to the West End in the English National Opera’s (ENO) acclaimed operatic adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale.

The Handmaid’s Tale opera will return to the ENO in a highly anticipated production. Read more about the upcoming show including how to get tickets, and all about the new arrival.

Sandra divides her time between her research into the melting ice caps and stand-up comedy. Concerned about her recent studies into the impact of human activity on the environment, she wants to use humour to raise awareness. But people around her are sceptical, as is her own family. Just as Cassandra predicted the fall of Troy without being heard, Sandra predicts the imminent approach of a terrible tragedy but no one is listening… 

This Autumn, the English National Opera (ENO) presents the first production of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard in the company's history.

This November, Tony and Olivier Award-winning stage and screen actor and musician Richard McCabe makes his operatic debut in the English National Opera's (ENO) first production of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) Label will release Tippett's opera The Midsummer Marriage on Friday 23 September – the first commercially released recording of the work in over 50 years.

This April, the César-nominated actor Camille Cottin will join the cast of the English National Opera’s (ENO) new production of The Handmaid’s Tale at the London Coliseum. Collaborating with a cast of world-class opera singers, Camille will be making her West End debut acting in her first opera.

This April, the English National Opera's (ENO) Artistic Director Annilese Miskimmon will make her company directorial debut with a powerful new production of Poul Ruders' The Handmaid's Tale. Based on Margaret Atwood's seminal novel, this outstandingly relevant work was last staged at the London Coliseum in 2003 when it received its first English language debut. 

Some curious directorial choices fail to blunt the force of Wagner's musical donner und blitzen as the gods bicker and bully and the mortals bleed

In 1955 Michael Tippett introduced his first opera The Midsummer Marriage to a grey, post-war society desperate for some joy and optimism. It has divided the critics, with detractors pointing to the awkward libretto and fans in raptures with the sumptuous score. It is certainly a huge piece for the London Philharmonic Orchestra's new Principal Conductor, Edward Gardner, to conduct as his debut. However, the result was enthralling.

The festival opens with four wonderful song recitals presented in partnership with BBC Radio 3 featuring Robert Murray and Alisdair Hogarth, James Atkinson and Sholto Kynoch, Catriona Morison and Malcolm Martineau, and Mary Bevan and Joseph Middleton.  Over the course of these two weeks some of the best classical musicians gather to bring audiences a very special re-immersion in the power of live music.

Los Angeles Operaa??s program of music from Golden Age Musicals features pianist/curator Brendon Shapiro, and the company's 2019/20 young artists, Anthony Ciaramitaro, Sarah Vautour, Robert Stahley, Taylor Raven, Alaysha Fox, Sylvia Da??Eramo, Tiffany Townsend, Gabriela Flores, Michael J. Hawk, and Erica Petrocelli singing music by Bernstein, Cahn, Lerner, Kern, Gershwin, Rodgers, Porter, Wright/Borodin, Herman, Romberg, and Loesser.

Joe Hill-Gibbins returns to ENO with his staging of The Marriage of Figaro, making his main stage debut alongside Chief Conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra Kevin John Edusei, who makes his ENO debut in the pit.

The Philharmonia announces its 2020/21 Season at Southbank Centre, which will be Esa-Pekka Salonen's 13th and last as Principal Conductor & Artistic Advisor of the Orchestra. The highlight of Salonen's final season is a focus on music inspired by Greek myth. In Origin Stories: Greek Myth in Music, Salonen conducts Scriabin's Prometheus: The Poem of Fire with Yuja Wang as soloist (24 Sep 2020) and Strauss' Elektra with soprano soloists Irene Theorin and Lise Davidsen (7 Feb 2021). And to close the Season (10 Jun 2021), Salonen conducts Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe (complete) alongside the European premiere of his own work Gemini.

The Handel and Haydn Society, led by artistic director Harry Christophers, will bring one of the most beautiful and deeply moving masterpieces of the Baroque period to life with a performance of Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas on Friday, March 29, 2019 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, March 31, 2019 at 3:00 p.m. at NEC's Jordan Hall in Boston.

In Spring 2019, the internationally renowned, Boston-based, early music champion, the Handel and Haydn Society, returns to New York City for two stunning concerts. These performances, housed in two of New York City's most unique and celebrated concert venues, reflect the Handel and Haydn Society's impeccable consideration for historically-informed concert traditions, immaculate expression of the Renaissance and Baroque philosophies, and characteristic taste and precision of artistry. Under its esteemed artistic director of a decade, Harry Christophers, the 204-year-old ensemble brings the fiercely emotive early opera Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell to the spectacular Temple of Dendur setting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Sackler Wing, as well as an all-Vivaldi recital including works for soprano, violin, and viola d'amore at the Morgan Library.

Solomon provides a transcendent sensory experience and more than a few lessons for today;s rulers.

In opera, there is often nothing more dangerous than female sexuality. Salome is a story where a woman's love becomes dangerous obsession, leading to bloodshed and necrophilia. From a feminist perspective, the story is challenging to say the least, but as Richard Strauss' opera, the result should be both brutal and beautiful. In this new production from the ENO, Australian Director Adena Jacobs makes her UK debut with a supposedly feminist perspective of the story that at times entertains, but more often baffles.

With 16 Handel and Haydn Society premieres, the first performance of Schubert's Symphony No. 9 by H+H since 1865, and a host of notable guest performers, the Handel and Haydn Society announces its 2018-19 season, the 204th season in its history.