Music and Opera

In Oliver Mears’s new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto, the curtain rises on a work of art. The stage is in deep shadow, the backdrop glowing with the rich impasto of an old master painting. Out front, and lit like a Caravaggio, the Duke of Mantua poses amid a mass of human figures in sculptural attitudes. It’s a living representation of some allegorical Renaissance swagger portrait and, as we’re about to see, this Duke is something of a connoisseur. A colossal Venus of Urbino reclines lasciviously above the Act One orgy, replaced in Act Two by an equally gigantic Rubens: Europa riding a wild-eyed bull. Anyway, it looks classy and suitably

For a one-hit composer, we hear rather a lot of Pietro Mascagni. His reputation rests on his 1890 debut Cavalleria Rusticana, the one-act Sicilian shocker that’s usually yoked (not always to its advantage) to Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. But in recent years we’ve also seen the cod-medieval car crash of Isabeau, and a couple of outings for Iris, an opera that fuses orientalist opulence with tentacle porn, but not in a good way. In fairness, there have been winners too: Opera Holland Park revived L’amico Fritz in July, and this sun-kissed romcom about an Alsatian cherry farmer slipped down like a Negroni with audiences thirsty for a strong, sweet triple-shot of escapism,

Arthur Sullivan knew better than to mess with a winning formula. ‘Cox and Box, based on J. Maddison Morton’s farce Box and Cox’ reads the title page of his first comic opera, composed to a libretto by F.C. Burnand a good five years before he latched up with W.S. Gilbert. ‘Those boys hit on a brilliant idea,’ Billy Wilder is supposed to have said when he saw the musical that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black had created from his movie Sunset Boulevard. ‘They didn’t change a thing.’ Gilbert’s comic beats are sharper and faster; and he’d doubtless have shortened it by about 15 minutes. But Burnand’s words gave the

For some reason, I’d got it into my head that the main work in the Gringolts Quartet’s midday recital at the Edinburgh Festival was going to be Beethoven’s Quartet in C sharp minor, Op.131. No problem with that, of course; it’s exactly the sort of big serious work you’d expect a big serious international violin soloist like Ilya Gringolts to play when he forms a string quartet, and then to bring on tour to a big serious international festival like Edinburgh. Still, it’s not a piece that you can really listen to before lunch without a certain amount of mental preparation; and it was while revisiting the Festival website that

Grade: C+ Time to get the razor out again — Billie’s back. The slurred and affected can’t-be-arsed-to-get-out-of-bed vocals. The relentless, catatonic introspection, self-pity and boilerplate psychological insights. The queen of sadgurls has a new album — and yes, of course, the title is the closest Billie has ever come to making a joke. Of course she’s not happy — that would be her schtick sold down the river. If Billie ever professed herself really happy her fans would quickly go elsewhere to slake their misery jones. Eilish has talent, along with the over-weening narcissism that comes with affording your every feeling a sense of great, dramatic import. But it is

Some years ago, when I was the music editor of a newspaper, I called a number of historians of black music asking if any of them could write about why the audience for new music made in the styles of classic soul, blues or jazz was almost entirely white. The people I asked, some of them august commentators on African-American culture, offered a few suggestions: black music was historically co-opted and deracinated by the white music industry so comprehensively that black artists just didn’t want to go back there; black music has always been about progression rather than revival, and it is simply of no interest to look back; the

What would a rock band have to do now to be seen as heralding the future? Twenty years ago, it was enough to be in possession of sharp cheekbones, tight jeans and 11 fantastic songs. The first album by the Strokes, Is This It, was released 20 years ago this month. It spread around the world in a way that would be impossible now. Only Australia got the album in July 2001. The UK release was not for another month, to tie in with the Reading and Leeds festivals. The US vinyl version was released on 11 September, but the CD edition was held back, so they could remove the