Wow, this is good: Grange Park Opera’s Ivan the Terrible reviewed

There are worse inconveniences than having to wear a face mask to the opera. But there’s one consequence that hadn’t really struck home until an hour into Rimsky-Korsakov’s Ivan the Terrible. The citizens of Pskov are massing in the streets. The Tsar’s army is approaching, and Rimsky is building one of those surging Russian crowd scenes: bass-heavy chorus blazing away while ominous bell sounds — basses, horns and rasping gong — shake the orchestra to its bones. Suddenly a bloodstained figure staggers in and collapses; a refugee from nearby Novgorod. ‘Your brother-city sends its greetings, and asks you to arrange its funeral,’ he gasps. At that point, I’d have given quite a lot to have been able to lean over to my companion and silently mouth just four words — wow, this is good.

Cards on the table: I’m more likely to shed tears at Don Carlos than La traviata, and I fidget impatiently through the Falstaff bits in Henry IV.