Christopher Purves

Watch a spooky tour complete with opera ghost stories in this video from the Royal Opera House here!

The nights are getting shorter, the swimming trunks are being packed away and you probably have bought some new pens and pencils. September is here and promises some amazing theatre to come. Check out our top ten recommendations for theatre in London this month.

The Royal Opera House has announced that its next Cinema Season will comprise of 13 productions, eight of which will be broadcast to screens across the globe. The programme offers audiences the best seat in the house – sharing the joy of live performance, and the beauty of world class art, with cinema goers in more than 50 countries around the world.  

On June 8, 10 & 11, 2023, Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony are joined by acclaimed director Peter Sellars for a new staged production of Kaija Saariaho's Adriana Mater, an intensely moving work to a libretto of Amin Maalouf, which explores the relationship between a mother and her son as they navigate a world rumbling with the threat of violence.

The Royal Opera House has announced its 2023/24 Season, unveiling a bold programme of thrilling new work, UK premieres and much-loved revivals, alongside the biggest national learning programme in our history, exciting new regional partnerships, and a host of daytime events, behind the scenes tours, exhibitions and artistic Insights at our home in the heart of Covent Garden. 

The Canadian Opera Company announced its 2023/2024 season today featuring a slate of exciting new productions and rare musical gems.

Placido Domingo has announced the company's 2019/20 season. The season will include six mainstage operas, one musical, one recital and one concert presented at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with additional performances presented in other venues through the company's Off Grand initiative.

Houston Grand Opera (HGO) will present its 2019-20 season with a broad repertoire of operas in productions that have never been seen by Houston audiences. The 65th season will open October 18, 2019, with Verdi's classic Rigoletto. Tomer Zvulun returns to direct the season opener after successfully opening the 2018-19 season with his production of The Flying Dutchman. American baritone Brian Mulligan sings his first Rigoletto leading an outstanding cast filled with renowned HGO Studio alumni, including Mexican tenor Arturo Chacon-Cruz as the Duke of Mantua and Armenian soprano Mane Galoyan as Gilda. Paired with Rigoletto is the North American  premiere of the dramatic oratorio Saul in a much-lauded and imaginative production by Barrie Kosky. Christopher Purves returns to the title role after his celebrated performance at the Glyndebourne Festival and is joined by countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen and Korean soprano Pureum Jo, both HGO Studio alumni.

Stefan Herheim, one of Europe's most exciting directors, makes his company debut with Glyndebourne's first new production of Pelleas in nearly 20 years. Check out production photos below!

Stefan Herheim, one of Europe's most exciting directors, makes his company debut with Glyndebourne's first new production of Pelléas in nearly 20 years.

Norfolk & Norwich Festival has today announced the full programme for its 2018 Festival (11 - 27 May). The programme, which spans performance, theatre, music, visual arts, literature, circus, outdoor and family events, includes world and UK premieres, one-off spectaculars, and a host of free events across the Festival. The Festival will showcase renowned international artists from across the globe and countries as widespread as Syria, Australia and India, alongside the best local Norfolk and UK talent presented across the county, from Norwich city centre and Great Yarmouth to Wells-next-the-Sea.

It's just about time to wish you all a happy 2018--but I'm not quite ready to put 2017 to rest. Though it won't go into the annals as one of the best years ever, there were quite enough performances and performers that made this year a winner for me, operatically speaking at least, in my corner of the world.

The 17th Annual Helpmann Awards will be announced at a ceremony on starting at 7pm EST Monday 24th July at the Capitol Theatre Sydney.

Just after hearing the wonderfully well sung, semi-staged DAS RHEINGOLD at the NY Philharmonic, under departing Music Director Alan Gilbert, I saw the current Broadway revival of THE LITTLE FOXES. It seemed Richard Wagner's gods and Lillian Hellman's Hubbards had lots in common: The small-minded, self-serving gods of this production, at least, could have been friends and neighbors of the mendacious, corrupt Southerners in Hellman's play (or even of a would-be-royal family in Washington, DC).

Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic (photo: Chris Lee) In 2009, the year Alan Gilbert took over as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker: “Simply put, the orchestra is playing better than it has in the seventeen years that I've been a critic in New York.” The intervening years have seen Gilbert go from strength to strength, with critics and audiences alike responding with generous enthusiasm to the superb quality of the performances and to the new initiatives that transformed the orchestra into “a force of permanent revolution” (New York magazine).

In the third of Alan Gilbert's final four subscription weeks as New York Philharmonic Music Director, he will lead an enhanced concert production of Wagner's Das Rheingold. Soloists include bass-baritone Eric Owens as Wotan, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton as Fricka (in her New York Philharmonic debut), baritone Christopher Purves as Alberich (debut), tenor Russell Thomas as Loge, mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor as Erda, bass Morris Robinson as Fasolt (debut), bass Stephen Milling as Fafner (debut), soprano Rachel Willis-Sorensen as Freia (debut), tenor Brian Jagde as Froh (debut), bass-baritone Christian Van Horn as Donner (debut), tenor Peter Bronder as Mime (debut), soprano Jennifer Zetlan as Woglinde, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano as Wellgunde, and mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford as Flosshilde. The enhanced concert production will be directed by Louisa Muller with costume design - featuring character-based treatment of modern concert attire - by David C. Woolard. The performances will take place Thursday, June 1, 2017, at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, June 3 at 8:00 p.m.; and Tuesday, June 6 at 7:30 p.m.

Houston Grand Opera presents Gotterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods), the final installment of Wagner's epic Ring cycle, featuring a new generation of leading Wagnerians including Simon O'Neill as Siegfried and Christine Goerke as Brunnhilde, starting April 22.

A sensational retelling of the story of Saul and David, the first two kings of the Israelites.

In the fall of 1987, Houston Grand Opera's world premiere of Nixon in China made political headlines and galvanized the opera world. Thirty years later, John Adams's trailblazing opera returns in a new-to-Houston production that sheds light on the electronic media's role in political history, just as a new media-savvy American president takes office.

English National Opera has been having a hard time with Don Giovanni lately. First there was Calixto Bieito's groggy, pastel-coloured nightmare (who could forget the pistachio leather dentist's chair), which paled into adequacy when compared to Rufus Norris's bafflingly unlovely (and just generally baffling) vision that followed. Richard Jones's new production is in no way a failure - there's far too much intelligence here for that, as well as more than one flash of utter brilliance - but it still feels like a show as yet not fully in focus. At his best Jones can make the most startlingly revisionist concept seem like it has always been staring you in face. Here his reading intrigues, compels, but never feels fully rooted in Mozart's music-drama.