JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
Cosi Fan Tutte
Wales Millennium Centre
A NEW production of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutti should be a cause for celebration, but Welsh National Opera’s latest adaptation creates even more problems from troublesome subject matter. Of course the music and singing is sublime, but this is opera and we expect the acting and staging to enhance and engage us.
The trouble is that the 18th-century storyline is a glaring example of misogyny writ large for today’s audience. That problem has been compounded by a staging which sets the action in a school, with the two couples played as schoolchildren in shorts and gymslips.
HENRY BELL follows the lineage of revolutions, from the English to the Chinese, and asks where revolutionary politics exists today
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends the staging of this Wagnerian classic minus one or two insignificant quibbles
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends a dazzling production of Bernstein’s opera set in a world where chaos and violence are greeted by equanimity
DAVID NICHOLSON is thrilled – and shocked – by an opera that seethes and sizzles with passion and the depraved use of power


