Le nozze di Figaro, Royal Opera

Colin Davis brings his habitual brisk elegance to Figaro. Pity the cast didn't get the memo

The opening night of Le nozze di Figaro was not so much an opera of two halves as an opera of two teams. In the pit we had Sir Colin Davis and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House offering a crisply incisive rendering of Mozart’s score; onstage we had the Royal Opera Chorus and a selection of soloists, most of whom seemed set on a rather different – and, in the case of the chorus, downright lacklustre – rendition of the score.

Opera Italia, BBC Four

Royal Opera music director Antonio Pappano communicates the full magic of opera

The backlash begins here with the first of Flavia Rittner's three documentaries: not an operatic wannabe or a gushing celebrity outsider to present, only a conductor who knows and loves his job inside out and a parade of gorgeous, energetic singers all at the very top of their hard-working game in state-of-the-art productions.

Production Gallery: The Royal Opera's La Fille Du Régiment

Bill Cooper's production photographs of the fizzing Donizetti charmer

Bill Cooper photographed the Laurent Pelly production for The Royal Opera of Donizetti's La Fille du régiment, designed by Chantal Thomas and Laurent Pelly, conducted by Bruno Campanella, and starring Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez. Here is a selection of images, and you can read theartsdesk review here.

La Fille Du Régiment, Royal Opera

Kill to get a ticket for an unsurpassably entertaining Donizetti staging

You can take the girl out of the barracks but you can’t take the barracks out of the girl would be one way to sum up Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment (Daughter of the Regiment), which I can’t conceive could have a more ribtickling production, more brilliantly sung, than the delight that opened last night at Covent Garden. Kill, as they say, to get a ticket. It has Natalie Dessay, Juan Diego Flórez, Ann Murray and Dawn French, and in a starring supporting role comes one of the wittiest set of translating surtitles I’ve ever come across. “It’s raining soldiers,” complains the butler as the aristocratic kidnap of regimental mascot Marie goes wrong. “They’re my daddies,” she shouts happily.

theartsdesk Q&A: Conductor Semyon Bychkov

Russian conductor on his award-winning recording of Lohengrin and his mentor Karajan

Yesterday afternoon, Semyon Bychkov's recording of Lohengrin won BBC Music Magazine's prestigious disc of the year. Last year, The Sunday Telegraph named his recording of Eugene Onegin one of the top 10 opera recordings of all time. Proof - if proof were needed - that the Russian conductor is one of the living greats of the operatic pit. His upcoming Tannhäuser next season at Covent Garden is awaited with bated breath.

1954 Cunning Little Vixen

Front of Suprapon's recording of The Cunning Little Vixen
Filmed extracts of a fantastically vivid 1954 production of Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen have been unearthed by the great blogger Doundou Tchil of Classical Iconoclast. Václav Neumann is the conductor; Berlin's Komische Oper is the house. Whets the appetite for tonight's Bill Bryden revival production at Covent Garden. Hard to imagine the sets or the acting (watch that singing vixen scrambling about before the poacher) being bettered. My friend says I'm setting myself up for a fall. But Sir Charles Mackerras will no doubt give Neumann a run for his money.

Tamerlano, Royal Opera

Graham Vick's masterclass on how not to do Baroque opera

Graham Vick's Tamerlano is less of an opera and more of a warning. In four and half hours you see 26 ways of how not to handle the Baroque aria. Dramatic success in Handel and his psychological flights of mainly soliloquising fancy is never easy but last night's ill-fated Royal Opera House production (Placido Domingo called in sick a few weeks back) was a lesson in abject theatrical failure.

Domingo withdraws

The Royal Opera House announced today that Plácido Domingo is withdrawing from next month's production of Tamerlano at Covent Garden. Domingo, who turned 69 in January, was due to sing the role of Bajazet in Handel's opera over seven performances between 5 and 20 March. But he has been suffering from lower abdominal pain while performing in Tokyo, and has returned to New York for preventive surgery. The hope is that he will be back performing in six weeks.


Così fan tutte, Royal Opera/ Joyce DiDonato, Wigmore Hall

A consummately acrid Cosi from Jonathan Miller and a heaven-sent recital of rare songs from DiDonato

Two very different lessons on love this week. From the Aphrodite-like Joyce DiDonato at the Wigmore Hall, there emerged a correct, wise, honest way to achieve an enamoured state; from the familiarly fickle cast of Così fan tutte - an almost unwatchably faulty bunch of emotional primitives in Jonathan Miller's production for the Royal Opera - very much the wrong way.

theartsdesk Q&A: Conductor Antonio Pappano

On his life and loyalities divided between Rome and London

Antonio Pappano (b. 1959) enjoys the best of two opulent worlds. At the Royal Opera House in London (now his home city), he's well stuck in to his seventh season as music director, basking in popularity and plaudits previous incumbents could only have dreamt of. In Rome, he's director of the Orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, a post he took up in 2005.

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