La fanciulla del West, Opera Holland Park, 26 May 2026

Minnie – Amanda Echalaz
Jack Rance – Robert Hayward
Dick Johnson – José de Eça
Nick – Zwakele Tshabalala
Ashby – Alaric Green
Sonora – Aidan Edwards
Trin – Jamie Formoy
Sid – Joe Ashmore
Bello – Michael Temporal Darell
Harry – Dominick Felix
Joe – Hugh Beckwith
Happy – Matthew Duncan
Jim Larkens – Samuel Snowden
Billy Jackrabbit – Freddie Tong
Wowkle – Kezia Bienek
Jake Wallace – Blaise Malaba
José Castro – Ronald Nairne
Pony Express Rider – Robert Jenkins

Director – Martin Lloyd-Evans
Designs – Anna Reid
Lighting – Jamie Platt
Choreography – Róisín Whelan
Fight director – Haruka Kuroda

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Dominic Ellis-Peckham)

City of London Sinfonia

Matthew Kofi Waldren (conductor)

Images: Craig Fuller

This year, Opera Holland Park celebrates its thirtieth anniversary. Now a fixture in London’s operatic calendar, it continues to put many allegedly starrier stages to shame, not only through the quality of its productions and a wise stewardship that continues to build on its particular artistic strengths, but also through the genuine warmth of its welcome to newcomers and seasoned operagoers alike, and to its commitment to community and sustainability. Puccini has always stood at the heart of its offerings, so opening the 2026 season with a new production of La fanciulla del West, directed by Martin Lloyd-Evans and conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren, was fitting and welcome. It turned out to show the company at its best: an interesting, intelligent staging, with excellent musical values, including a City of London Sinfonia one would never have guessed from the sound included only five first violins and a well assembled team of seasoned and newer vocal artists.

When talking about how differently an opera – or any other performing artwork – has struck one on different occasions, it is always difficult to know how much to attribute to the performance, broadly conceived including production, and how much to oneself. It will often be a combination of both; the important thing to remind oneself is that one may be more or less receptive at different times. I suspect, as an astute critic said to me during the interval, that Fanciulla may be a work that speaks more readily to those of a certain age. Its themes become more apparent, as well as more meaningful. (That may also be in part a reflection of coming to know it better.) But I am pretty sure it was only that; much in Lloyd-Evans’s production skilfully drew out the work’s dramatic concerns without overt interventionism, tracing a careful and involving path between its tricky combination of realism and redemption, neither of which it seems desirable, even possible, to underplay, let alone jettison. 

First among these themes is surely loneliness; at least, it felt so here. I do not doubt a more overt, even contemporary thematization could work too, but a hallmark of this production was to draw it out of what we could imagine the work ‘itself’ to be. Related to that and with similar contemporary resonance, period setting notwithstanding, is the theme of migration. For these are people who have come to California from across the world, not only the continent. In that lie their hopes, their fears, their sadness, and their possibilities to build something new—such as love. The dramatic, emotional point of the first scene, of men meeting at the Polka saloon, unsure of how they can and should relate to one another, whether missing their ‘homes’ elsewhere or otherwise, comes across strongly. Minnie and Dick Johnson are not so different, though they step out from that generality. And, as Minnie reminds us, none of them, her included, has clean hands: this could readily tilt into a Brecht-Weill Mahagonny, although ultimately its direction could hardly stand more strongly opposed. 

That is all in the work, one might say, and in many ways that is so, but one is led to understand and feel that with greater clarity and indeed emotional depth than I can previously recall. Dancing with another, faute de mieux, is touching in its heterosexual wariness but also its brief joy, though the ‘real thing’ lies between the central couple—and between them alone. We follow its origins, its rekindling, its blooming, its crisis, and its victory, through detailed, yet never fussy direction that supports every character onstage to trace a plausible path. There are set-piece moments, as there are in the work. They make reference, or at least conform, to our ideas of the Western, brought further to life in Anna Reid's resourceful designs and Jamie Platt's lighting. But they are never mere clichés: they have a function, narrative and emotional, and effect that function well.  

Waldren’s direction of the CLS and its playing were first-class. If you would have me down as a sceptic for chamber orchestra Puccini, even in so skilful a reduction as that by Ettore Panizza, you would be right. Not only, though, was I convinced from the outset; the question never arose in the first place. Here was a sound that was throughout just right, a gorgeous string sheen the icing on a cake of many ingredients, often dissolving in strikingly modernist fashion before our ears, whilst never forgetting its ‘Italian’ – forgive the essentialism – heart. Flexible yet directed, warm yet variegated, here was a Fanciulla that evoked the Puccini of his past and future, whilst reminding us how close much of it stands to Tristan und Isolde, to Debussy, and to the operas and film scores of Korngold and company. If I had a slight doubt, I wondered whether it might move on a little faster at times, but such matters come down to taste more than judgement. Passages of suspended time had their own dramatic motivation, palpably received throughout a packed audience.

 

Amanda Echalaz’s Minnie was similarly world-class: a far more complex character than I have seen and heard before and all the better for it. There were goodness and wisdom there, to be sure, but also pride and even resentment: as was very much her right. Her alchemy of words and music was shared by the charismatic José de Eça, at least as lovelorn and with all the greater need for a redemptive arc. One could not but root for them, much as one feared (even when one ‘knew’) darker forces would win out. Robert Hayward’s Jack Rance married a Scarpia of the West with something deeper, doubtless drawing on his experience in Wagner up to and including Wotan. No one sentimentalised, crucial in this of all composers, and the drama was all the richer for it. Cast from depth, a community was brought to life by singers such as Zwakele Tshabalala’s Nick, Alaric Green’s Ashby, Aidan Edwards’s Sonora, and many others, not least Kezia Bienek’s loyal Wowkle. This, though, was very much a company effort, with an outstanding chorus trained by Dominic Ellis-Peckham at its beating heart. All contributed to something greater than the sum of its considerable parts.

 

For the ending not to seem trite, even silly, it needs broader, redemptive resonance: not an easy task for our age. It is arguably here that the work needs a little help, and the question is raised as to what sort of work it really is. Clearly it is not a tragedy, though it has seemed to be leading that way. Nor is it a comedy, save in the sense that it is not a tragedy. It is easier, I think, to take Turandot as a perverted, even repellent version of the latter. It might be easier to take Fanciulla as such, if it had a greater mythological element to it, as Wagner does even in Die Meistersinger. Tristan is a tragedy that, in the older or at least George Steiner sense, turns aside too. Whilst one might draw a comparison here, perhaps the problem is that it does not feel appropriate, for various reasons, of which realism is only one. The point is not, of course, classification, Aristotelian or otherwise, for its own sake. It is perfectly fine for a work simply to be itself; ultimately it must be. But when doubts linger concerning the happy ending, such questions more or less inevitably arise. A potential future carved out for the lovers is hard-won in its way, It is difficult to argue with Minnie’s admonitions and persuasion: she deserves it. But do we believe in it? In Così fan tutte, of course we do not: that is the point. If I am still not entirely clear what the point is here, first the problem may well be mine, and second this came far closer to convincing me than any performance previously, the dress rehearsal I was fortunate enough to attend included. So there was an emotional truth to what we saw and heard in committed performance, as in staging, as in work. The three came together in just the way opera of most kinds should.

Happy thirtieth anniversary, then, Opera Holland Park. It has been a pleasure to share a good few of those years with you, and I hope to share many more of them.

Salzburg Festival (1) - Adès, The Exterminating Angel, 5 August 2016




Images: Salzburger Festspiele/Monika Rittershaus
Francisco (Iestyn Davies), Silvia (Sally Matthews), Leticia (Audrey Luna),
Leonora (Anne Sofie von Otter), Doctor (John Tomlinson)

Haus für Mozart

Lucía de Nobile – Amanda Echalaz

Leticia Maynar – Audrey Luna
Leonora Palma – Anne Sofie von Otter
Silvia de Ávila – Sally Matthews
Bianca Delgado – Christine Rice
Beatriz – Sophie Bevan
Edmundo de Nobile – Charles Workman
Raúl Yebenes – Frédéric Antoun
Colonel Álvaro Gómez – David Adam Moore
Francisco de Ávila – Iestyn Davies
Eduardo – Ed Lyon
Señor Russell – Sten Byriel
Alberto Roc – Thomas Allen
Doctor Carlos Conde – John Tomlinson
Julio – Morgan Moody
Lucas – John Irvin
Enrique – Franz Gürtelschmied
Pablo – Rafael Fingerlos
Meni – Frances Pappas
Camila – Anna Maria Dur
Padre Sansón – Cheyne Davidson
Yoli – Leonard Radauer
Servants – Maria Hegele, Silke Redhammer, Harald Wurmsdobler, Jakov Pejcic
Dancers – Uli Kirsch, Sophia Preidel, Stine Rønne, Pim Veulings, Eva Svaneblom

Tom Cairns (director)

Hildegard Bechtler (designs)
Jon Clark (lighting)
Tal Yarden (video)
Amir Hosseinpour (choreography)
Christian Arseni (dramaturgy)

 

Coming relatively late in the run to Thomas Adès’s new opera, The Exterminating Angel, I was unable to insulate myself entirely from what others had thought about it. I found people whose judgements I respect both fulsome in praise and in negative criticism. Seeing it here in Salzburg, I found myself in the somewhat unaccustomed situation of the juste milieu; I certainly did not find it a terrible work, far from it, but nor did I hear – or indeed see – anything in it that suggested it might hold the key to the operatic future. I was happy to have seen it, and should happily see it again, in order to see whether my mind would change; however, I cannot imagine travelling to do so. In what follows, I shall try to explain why, as well as paying tribute to the excellent performances from all concerned; I have little doubt that the opera received as fine a baptism as anyone could reasonably have hoped for.

Above all, I cannot answer the question ‘why an opera?’ To my shame, I had not seen Buñuel’s film before, but seeing the opera has sent me back to watch it. Even from a single viewing, it seems fully to merit its hallowed status. It is far less clear to me that it merits the transformation into an opera. In a sense, the answer to my question is simply, ‘because its creators wanted it to be’. It seems to me, though, that a great deal is lost and the work that emerges is, in some respects, not entirely free of sprawling self-indulgence. The cast is huge: in this case, a line-up of many of Covent Garden’s finest regular singers. (The production will move to London next year.) If one is going to transform a film into an opera, is it perhaps not better to offer more radical surgery? The stilted quality, even the superficiality, of high bourgeois conversation is clearly part of the point: as Bunuel, quoted in dramaturge, Christian Arseni’s admirable programme note, put it, ‘It wouldn’t be the same if I had used working-class characters, because they would have found a solution to their incarceration. … Because workers are more in touch with life’s difficulties.’ I cannot say that I found that critical element come to the fore here, though; is there perhaps too much all-purpose irony? I certainly would not go so far as to say that operatic characters need to elicit sympathy, but often it helps. Here, it is the Doctor – played in typically barnstorming fashion by John Tomlinson – who offers a voice of reflection, of reason; the problem is that he often seems in danger of being in a different opera altogether.

 

The first act, then, seemed pretty tedious to me in the theatre. The dramatic exposition does not lend itself especially well to musical treatment, although, as always with Adès, there are splendid vignettes: for instance, Blanca at the piano. (The request for her to play some Adès should really have been cut, though. Tom Cairns’s libretto – he also directs – is generally skilful indeed, but an in-joke should be funnier than that.) As the opera opens out, the composer’s exploration of situation and of relationship seems stronger, indeed more well-suited to conventional operatic writing. For, whatever this work is, it is not remotely experimental. Not that it need be, but it is far from clear to me that the operatic future, nor the better part of the operatic present, lies in neo-Verdian realism.

 

Parody is, unsurprisingly, a strong presence. I could not help but wonder whether the Johann Strauss waltzes – intriguingly, Adès, according to an enlightening interview with Cairns and Arseni, hears them as asking, ‘Why don’t you stay a little longer? Don’t worry about what’s going on outside’ – might have been a little less directly introduced. ‘When panic breaks out among the guests in Act Two,’ the composer continues, ‘I have layered motifs derived and distorted from various Strauss waltzes over one another in a Fugue of Panic, transforming them into a kind of whirlpool.’ To me, by contrast, it all sounded too obvious; elements sounded to me rather more than motifs and transformation did not seem to go very far. The explanation sounded more interesting than the musical reality, although the latter was certainly – like the dinner guests, or at least their conception of themselves – not without charm. The tolling bells with which the work starts and ends frame it well enough, although – presumably deliberately – they betoken a seriousness, an apocalyptic presence barely perceptible elsewhere. Adès’s employment of the ondes Martenot (yes, you guessed it: the excellent Cynthia Millar), apparently his first ever use of an electronic instrument, as the voice of the exterminating angel is clear enough, but it often just sounds a bit peculiar, even appliqué. Perhaps that is the point; nevertheless, I am not sure that the musical elements or indeed the musico-dramatic elements, insofar as they might be separated, really cohere. And yes, as you may have expected, we have a chaconne at the end.

 

Cairns’s productions looks wonderful in itself, Hildegard Bechtler’s set designs are imposing, her costume designs exquisite (as, dramatically, perhaps they should be). As with the work itself, I wondered whether something a little less straightforward might have helped one adopt more of a complex standpoint, both more distanced and more involved. But it does its job well enough, in terms that seem to be those of the opera itself. Adès’s conducting of the outstanding ORF SO sounded to me incisive and authoritative. To go through the cast, most of whom do not have very much to do, would not seem, at least on a first hearing, to do much more than repeat the cast list above. I mentioned Tomlinson earlier; others who stood out – and this may be as much a matter of their roles as anything else – were Amand Echalaz’s Lucía, Christine Rice’s Blanca, and Iestyn Davies’s Francisco, his vocal performance offering in its inflections a strong sense of the conflict in the character’s personality. Audrey Luna offered a trademark stratospheric performance, going far beyond Leticia’s role of the evening: Donizetti’s Lucia. Choral singing – there is not much of it – was excellent. Did the whole add up to more than the sum of its parts? Not really, although some of the parts were diverting enough.

Tosca, Royal Opera, 4 March 2013

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Cesare Angelotti – Michel de Souza

Sacristan – Jeremy White
Mario Cavaradossi – Massimo Giordano
Floria Tosca – Amanda Echalaz
Baron Scarpia – Michael Volle
Spoletta – Hubert Francis
Sciarrone – Jihoon Kim
Shepherd Boy – Filippo Turkheimer
Gaoler – John Morrissey

Jonathan Kent (director)

Andrew Sinclair (revival director)
Paul Brown (designs)
Mark Henderson (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Maurizio Benini (conductor)

 

 

I shall doubtless be behind the curve when compared with many readers concerning Jonathan Kent’s Royal Opera staging of Tosca, first seen in 2006 and now revived by Andrew Sinclair, given that this was my first viewing. There is not much to say about it really. It is certainly not radical in any way, nor does it seem to have anything to say about the work. (To be fair, though, when Kent has seemed to have had something to say, for instance, in his dreadful Flying Dutchman for ENO, it has not always seemed coherent or worth saying.) I doubt that there is anything to which even the most hidebound ‘traditionalist’ – by which, I mean a fetishiser of set designs and costumes, who thinks that everything should conform to his or her poor-taste conception of what might be ‘beautiful’ – might object. There was certainly nothing so daring as a spot of updating, let alone any sense of dialogue between Puccini’s time, our own, and the time at which the opera is set. The greatest, arguably the only, dramatic jolt came from the third act gunshots. Relatively heavy set designs (Paul Brown) might have added a sense of dramatic claustrophobia, but that would have required something a little more than simply placing singers in front of them and leaving them to it. I can see why having the Te Deum take place a level above Scarpia might visually have seemed an attractive idea; the problem, however, was that it dulled the aural impact of the chorus to the level of background music, when a degree at least of sensory overload should be experienced.

 

Maurizio Benini, however, delivered a decent account, and sometimes rather more than that, of Puccini’s score. Again, it did not especially challenge, but it brought to life that which remained visually dormant. If my preference would undoubtedly be for something that brought more to the fore the symphonism of which many of Puccini’s contemporaries complained, likewise his modernist anticipations, then that has to remain a preference rather than stipulation. In a relatively straightforward way, Benini, a slightly hard-driven opening aside, supported and shaped the action, the melodramatic dénouement quite thrilling in its way. Turning of the musical screws of torture was accomplished to truly searing effect. A few slips aside, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House played well for him, if without quite sounding on the very top of its form. I could not help but wonder, though, what more we might have learned from a great conductor such as Daniele Gatti, whose Salzburg Bohème last summer made a more powerful case for the score than any I have otherwise heard. Gatti of course had the signal advantage too of the Vienna Philharmonic playing for a conductor it loves.

 

And yet, if that all sounds a little easy-listening, one was must take into account the singular contribution of Massimo Giordano’s Cavaradossi. If a Konzept were entirely lacking in Kent’s staging, Giordano supplied his own element of deconstruction, offering a brave parody of popular conceptions of the ‘Italian operatic tenor’. There was no Kaufmann-esque mezza voce here. Instead we heard one of the most convincing assumptions of the ‘Just one Cornetto’ style I have experienced since – well, since that advertisement. What do you mean, it was not intended as a parody? Was that ‘authenticity’ too, in terms of ‘what Puccini might have expected,’ in the unfeasibly wide vibrato and portamento comprising a decent sized portion of the chromatic scale? In the immortal words of the Princess Royal, replying to Cherie Blair’s urging, ‘Call me Cherie,’ ‘Let’s not go there.’

 

Amanda Echalaz, however, offered a detailed, beautifully sung account of the title role. If she never thrilled in the way the Greek soprano who shall not be mentioned has unfortunately led us to expect, then such is a more than usually odious comparison. Michael Volle was perhaps better still, presenting an uncommonly intelligent assumption of Baron Scarpia. Hints of Dr Schön – and not just because so many of us associate him with the role – informed this villain’s sadism; if only a plot twist might have been added, in which Jack the Ripper appeared during the third act. Volle’s command of words and musical line was second to none, lifting the melodrama in many cases beyond itself. Many of the smaller roles were very well taken too. Jette Parker Young Artist, Michel de Souza, an attractive, compelling Angelotti, made one eager to hear more of him in the future; doubtless we shall. Hubert Francis’s contribution as Spoletta did likewise. Company stalwart, Jeremy White, presented as rounded a Sacristan as production and work permitted. And let us not forget Filippo Turkheimer, who certainly made one sit up and listen to the Shepherd Boy’s solo, more dramatically telling than I can previously recall.


I am unsure whether this were a matter of 'access', but the audience seemed to be largely made up of the hard of hearing. Not once was the orchestra permitted to complete an act prior to applause. Moreover, barely a bar of the third act passed by without bronchial accompaniment, chattering, throwing keys on the floor (??!!)...

Eugene Onegin, English National Opera, 12 November 2011

Coliseum

Madame Larina – Diana Montague
Tatiana – Amanda Echalaz
Olga – Claudia Huckle
Filipievna – Catherine Wyn-Rogers
Eugene Onegin – Audun Iversen
Lensky – Toby Spence
Monsieur Triquet – Adrian Thompson
Zaretsky – David Stout
Prince Gremin – Brindley Sherratt
Captain – Paul Napier-Burrows
Peasant Singer – David Newman

Deborah Warner (director)
Tom Pye (designs)
Chloe Obolensky (costumes)
Jean Kalman (lighting)
Kim Brandstrup (choreography)

Chorus and Additional Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Merry)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)

Images: Neil Libbert

Was this ENO? Or had I nodded off and slipped into a living Met nightmare? Actually, ‘nightmare’ is too harsh, too interesting, for Deborah Warner’s production of Eugene Onegin, actually conceived, I discovered, as a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, is just plain dull, a strange throwback to the 1970s or further back still, in which singers sing their lines against a pretty – to some – backdrop in ‘period’ dress that might well have come from a television serial. The ‘period’ in question seems to be slightly later than Pushkin, to no obvious end. Now there is nothing necessarily wrong with ‘traditional’ productions, but this one offered no discernible view upon the work, no discernible insight, save perhaps for a tired, slightly misandrist suggestion that the work might be better off entitled ‘Tatiana Larina’, into the characters and their development, and no discernible provocation or even invitation to think. It is, I think, the first time I have witnessed members of the audience even –  I assure you, I am not making this up – applaud a Coliseum set, in this case as the curtain rose for the third act, obscuring Tchaikovsky's Polonaise. (They indulged in plenty of disruption elsewhere too, a selfish couple seated behind me a particular menace, speaking throughout the performance, unresponsive to the iciest of glares.)

Even from a literalist perspective, there are problems beyond the slight ‘updating’. Once one engages upon such a path, fetishising costumes, scenery, and the like, any deviation tends to stand out like a sore thumb. Thus, whilst a more neutral or suggestive space would doubtless double up without too much trouble for the first three scenes of the first act, we are left wondering in literalist mode why Tatiana appears to sleep in a capacious barn. (It will doubtless be more capacious still in New York.) Child ‘extras’ running around for no particular reason are an irritant; they seem to be a favoured device of the director, her ENO Messiah a case in point. Are not the costumes for the celebration of Tatiana’s name day a little on the dour side for such an occasion? Why does the final scene not appear quite where it ‘should’?

Lensky (Toby Spence)

More serious is the problem alluded to above, whereby Warner’s sympathies seemed only to be elicited by the female characters. It used often to be a critical plaint that the opera should not have been entitled Eugene Onegin; this production, whether by design or by default, comes across as an attempt to revive that view. Everything is centred upon Tatiana. The subtext – at times, it is barely ‘sub-‘ – of Romantic friendship or more between Onegin and Lensky is ignored. Surely it does not take even a leap of the imagination to appreciate how Tchaikovsky would have understood Onegin’s rejection of Tatiana, herself of course in many respects a projection of male homosexuality. To take at face value without any further probing the description of Onegin as an ‘outsider’ seems in this context merely bizarre: would one not at least ask what is meant by ‘outsider’, just as one would in Peter Grimes? The following words surely speak for themselves:

If I had wished to pass my life
within the confines of the family circle,
and benevolent fate had decreed for me
the role of husband and father,
then I should most likely not choose
any bride other than you.

Krzysztof Warlikowski’s Munich production (reviewed here by Jens Laurson) made explicit what might though need not remain implicit. One can remain relatively reticent, though, and still address this central issue of the opera: take Steven Pimlott’s woefully underrated production for Covent Garden, ‘traditional’ in look, but so much more dramatically alert than Warner’s production. Had the action been centred upon Tatiana in especially dramatic, more revisionist, fashion, I am sure that would have been a valid approach, but Warner’s focus seemed more a default setting than anything else.

Onegin (Audun Iversen) and Lensky

There was considerable compensation, however, to be heard from Edward Gardner’s conducting: undoubtedly the best I have heard from him at the Coliseum. If I have been spoilt by my most recent two hearings of the work in the theatre, both conducted by Daniel Barenboim, Gardner nevertheless impressed, Shape and sweep almost unfailingly present. There was a fine swagger to the choral numbers and the dances (in which the dancers made a good impression), which the more intimate moments – insofar as the production permitted them to exist – were executed with tenderness and genuine sympathy. If Gardner’s reading did not quite scintillate in the way that some can, there is plenty of scope for intensification as the run of performances proceeds. He certainly has the ENO Orchestra on fine form, though a few more strings would have been welcome. The chorus, trained by Martin Merry, returned to form too, though all suffered from Martin Pickard’s clunky English translation: if we must do without the Russian text and its inimitable sonorities, then we need a superior substitute.

Toby Spence shone out from the cast. (Lenskys often do.) Though his ardent sincerity was somewhat robbed of context by the production, it nevertheless left its mark. Audun Iversen was likewise hamstrung in the title role, though earlier on, fine English diction notwithstanding, he rarely seemed truly to get inside the part even in musical terms. His performance in the third act heated up nicely, however, so maybe first night nerves were a factor. Amanda Echalaz merely seemed miscast as Tatiana. Her high soprano often seemed thin and disengaged; attempts to compensate skirted dangerously close to Puccini-caricature. Claudia Huckle’s often blowsy Olga struck a discordant note in more than one sense. Adrian Thompson, however, made a fine impression with a sensitive rendition of Monsieur Triquet’s couplets, even if one could have done without the assumed 'French' accent. One dry patch apart, Brindley Sherratt shaped Prince Gremin’s aria well. Catherine Wyn-Rogers and Diana Montague contributed a focus to the roles of Filipievna and Mme Larina that was not always present elsewhere. I could not help wishing that they might be offered a little more to do.

Tatiana (Amanda Echalaz) and Prince Gremin (Brindley Sherratt)

For those weary, then, of Konzept-heavy productions, this Onegin might offer some balm; it is certainly worth hearing for Gardner and Spence. Yet there remains ample room for a more ‘traditional’ production that does not forego interpretation, of whatever variety.

The performance on 23 November will be recorded by BBC Radio 3 for subsequent broadcast.

Recommended performances on CD and DVD: