Arts administrator who founded the London Sinfonietta and led the Southbank Centre and Glyndebourne At the heart of British musical life for over 30 years, Nicholas Snowman, who has died suddenly aged 78, will be remembered in this country not only for the three flagship organisations he headed – London Sinfonietta, the Southbank Centre and Glyndebourne – but also by countless cultural enterprises to which he gave his committed support. Known as a quietly determined, even ruthless, administrator of radical persuasion, he energised the scene with his ambitious ideas but did not always succeed i ..read more

‘I photographed opera-goers in Paris over several months. The pictures were technically fine – but I wanted them to feel timeless. So I restaged them in Melbourne with models’ Many years ago I had a wonderful art dealer in Paris. At some point in the late 80s, the Opéra Garnier and Opéra Comique approached my gallery to invite me to collaborate with them. They had a tradition of commissioning visual artists – Richard Serra was also working on a production. I realised that what would interest me most would be to photograph the audience. It fascinates me how people are part of a tightly packed ..read more

Casts of singers who previously lived on streets to perform in Nottingham, Manchester and London After being born into homelessness, Phillippa Marlowe-Hunt, 42, continued to spend most of her life sofa surfing as a young adult. Next week, 20 years after her last night sleeping rough, she will sing opera to hundreds of people at London’s Southbank Centre. Phillippa is one of about 100 people with experience of homelessness who will perform alongside the BBC Concert Orchestra and the Sixteen choir as part of Streetwise Opera’s Re:sound programme ..read more

Bridgewater Hall, Manchester; Barbican; Royal Opera House, London A trio of young conductors vie for a job with the Hallé; Barbara Hannigan takes Mahler at his word; and Antonio Pappano makes a thriller of Puccini’s final opera The cheers in Manchester on Tuesday night were not only for the football (City’s 7-0 win against Leipzig). Another contest took place the same evening with more than 200 entries from across the world whittled down to a shortlist of eight, three finalists and one deserved winner. The aim of the Siemens Hallé international conductors competition is to appoint the Hallé or ..read more

A Welsh National Opera project is reaching out to patients via Zoom to share the benefits of exercises such as breath control The mezzo-soprano Kate Woolveridge has performed on grand stages in front of thousands of people but at the moment is the star of much more intimate sessions, helping groups of long Covid sufferers by passing on secrets from the world of opera. Woolveridge is one of a team of singers and teachers being beamed into participants’ living rooms and kitchens via Zoom for a Welsh National Opera (WNO) project designed to give them techniques and strategies used by performers t ..read more

Distracting behaviour, from eating noisily to using mobile phones, is a vexed issue. But the chorus of disapproval often suggests elitism and overlooks theatre’s history The recent debate over unruly audience behaviour began, very rightly, with warnings against drunken disorder in auditoriums after horror stories of rowdy musical theatre audiences taking the idea of “dancing in the aisles” a little too literally. But fast-forward to the latest social media outcry I spotted, over popcorn-munching at the ENO’s Rhinegold, and the conversation begins to assume the same shades of class snobbery and ..read more

Theatre Royal, GlasgowDavid McVicar’s atmospheric production of Puccini’s triptych gains from magnificent performances by Roland Wood and, in her company debut, Sunyoung Seo It’s rare to hear Puccini’s Il Trittico, his triple bill of one-act operas, performed as the single work the composer intended. His publisher’s warnings of the commercial risks the project presented were proved right. On its New York premiere in 1918 Gianni Schicchi was an instant hit, but audiences found the musical language of Il Tabarro indigestibly modern, while Suor Angelica was regarded as overly sentimental and too ..read more

As she stages a new production of The Dead City, Korngold’s wild opera banned by the Nazis, English National Opera’s artistic director Annilese Miskimmon talks about the company’s strong present and uncertain future ‘I’ve been a bit obsessed with it for a long time,” says Annilese Miskimmon of the opera she’s rehearsing in the studio downstairs. Her words are appropriate: if there has ever been an opera about obsession, then Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City) is it. The opera, completed in 1920 and steeped in the communal sense of loss after the first world war, tells the ..read more

Great Hampton Works; Symphony Hall; CBSO Centre, Birmingham Birmingham Opera Company regroup, and the CBSO triumph in Elgar’s great oratorio as the city’s rich musical life thrives. And shock and anger as the BBC Singers are axed Birmingham Opera Company has always challenged its audiences. Finding the venue is a first hurdle. When knowledge of Birmingham’s repurposed factories, skating rinks, ballrooms and leisure centres is sketchy, the only proof of arrival is the equally uncertain group huddled outside a shuttered building in an empty street. Minutes before start time, doors are flung open ..read more

The ensemble is lauded across the classical world. The BBC Singers inspire, educate and entertain, and their closure matters to us all. Here is why I won’t let this one go. My professional home for more than 13 years, where I learned my craft, where I learned to just turn up on time, sit down and do my job, is to be axed in favour of something newer, shinier, more “agile” and slightly cheaper. The BBC has decided to abolish what the composer Pierre Boulez once called the “jewel in its crown”: the BBC Singers. I joined this illustrious group fresh out of college. The audition was rigorous and t ..read more