Michael Tanner

Gender problems

It’s sometimes intriguing to speculate, as you go to an opera in a fringe production of one kind or another, about how much messing around (used neutrally) this or that popular work can take.

issue 22 January 2011

It’s sometimes intriguing to speculate, as you go to an opera in a fringe production of one kind or another, about how much messing around (used neutrally) this or that popular work can take.

It’s sometimes intriguing to speculate, as you go to an opera in a fringe production of one kind or another, about how much messing around (used neutrally) this or that popular work can take. OperaUpClose scored an enormous success with its version of La Bohème in 2009/10 (though its claim to be the longest-ever run of an opera should be balanced by the fact that The Cock Kilburn could seat only about 40 people). At the larger venue of the King’s Head, it went on to, in my view, a notably less successful The Barber of Seville (or Salisbury), a work which needs much more precise performance, as well as being a comedy, always treacherous for semi-professionals.

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