Hungarian conductor of modernist music who went on to compose operas with texts ranging from Three Sisters to Angels in America The Hungarian composer and conductor Peter Eötvös, who has died aged 80, is now best known for the 12 operas that he wrote during the last 25 years of his life. Before that, he played a leading role as a conductor specialising in the promotion of European musical modernism. Premiered in Lyon in 1998, the work that launched Eötvös’s career as a successful opera composer was Three Sisters. The libretto, written with Claus H Henneberg, reworks Anton Chekhov’s play into a ..read more

Royal Opera House; St Martin-in-the-Fields; Barbican, London Aigul Akhmetshina steals the show in Damiano Michieletto’s uneven new 70s-set Bizet. And in a good week for world premieres, four composers take on Handel while the London Symphony Orchestra channels death metal Young women strut around in hot pants and read their fate in the cards. Listless men in police uniform sweat, drool and rule. Spain, in the Royal Opera House’s Carmen, newly staged by Damiano Michieletto and conducted by Antonello Manacorda, is a semi-urban wasteland at the end of the General Franco era. A country long steepe ..read more

LSO’s Antonio Pappano says many in UK are ‘embarrassed’ by art form and suspicious of cultural achievements The conductor and musical director of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) has criticised the “misguided wokeism” behind what he called a “great suspicion” of opera and British cultural achievements. Antonio Pappano, 64, has been the musical director of the Royal Opera House for more than two decades. He becomes the LSO’s chief conductor in September, having spent a year as chief conductor designate after Simon Rattle stepped down ..read more

Trinity Buoy Wharf, London Riveting performances underpin a gratifyingly meta version of Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, retold around a Docklands film shoot The London Handel festival has always offered plenty of opportunities to hear the composer’s music in his own church, St George’s, Hanover Square. But this year, like last, the most interesting event takes audiences somewhere unfamiliar: to Trinity Buoy Wharf this time, an old storehouse on a windswept Docklands bank just across from the O2. As an optional extra you can even travel there by boat, serenaded by an oboe-bassoon quartet. As you prep ..read more

Morley/Moore Orchid Classics Erin Morley brings artless precision and liquid phrasing to her debut recording Erin Morley walks straight up into the front rank of high coloratura sopranos with her debut solo recording. The songs are all connected to flowers and gardens, and many also reference birdsong, which fits her perfectly: what’s most striking is her seemingly artless precision, however stratospherically high they take her voice. Her crystalline sound melts into liquid phrases that allow the words to come across strongly; moreover, her tone is full-bodied enough to carry more expansive so ..read more

Boulez’s 100th and Rattle’s 70th are among the highlights of the LSO’s new season with chief conductor Antonio Pappano in which British music is a strong thread. The orchestra also announced an £8m redevelopment of LSO St Lukes The London Symphony Orchestra today announced its 2024-25 season, the orchestra’s first under its chief conductor Antonio Pappano. British music will dominate, with a new work by James MacMillan opening the season on 11 September and works by Bax, Elgar, Holst, Walton, Elizabeth Maconchy and Tippett threaded through the following nine months of concerts. More of the UK ..read more

The Swedish artist Lap-See Lam is drawing on the Cantonese operas of the 19th century to explore the ‘fiction’ of culture Amid a polarising debate taking place in Sweden over what constitutes culture, the artist behind this year’s Nordic pavilion at the Venice Biennale hopes her multilingual opera staged on a Chinese dragon ship will act as a sort of riposte. Lap-See Lam, a Swedish artist with Cantonese roots, is leading the Nordic countries’ offering at the international exhibition, which opens on 20 April, with a multidisciplinary artwork ..read more

Royal Opera House, LondonConjuring the oppressive Mediterranean heat and the claustrophobia of a fraying close-knit community, Damiano Michieletto’s new production of Bizet’s tragedy is rich with drama and potent With its thorny sexual politics, a new production of Carmen can be a minefield. Prosper Mérimée’s original novella treats his fiercely independent central character with respect, but over the years the heroine’s brutal murder on show in Bizet’s opera has often embraced the voyeuristic characteristics of the bullfight taking place offstage. As in his Olivier award-winning Cavalleria Ru ..read more

Jonas Kaufmann, Anna Netrebko and Antonio Pappano pull off a buoyant La Gioconda; elsewhere, a fresh Verdi Requiem and a Byronic septuagenarian viola soloist made this a festival to remember Riddled with paradox, La Gioconda (1876) was a triumph at its premiere for its Italian composer, Amilcare Ponchielli, but is now seldom staged. The music is hardly known but contains a ballet, the Dance of the Hours, so famous through appropriation and parody that Ponchielli’s name lives on. (Think of hippos en pointe in Walt Disney’s Fantasia.) All praise to the Salzburg Easter festival for assembling an ..read more

This powerful reimagining of the soprano’s toxic relationship with the Greek shipping tycoon captures the drama and heartbreak of one of the most celebrated singers of all time It’s more than 100 years since the birth of Greek-American soprano Maria Callas, and still no one in the opera world has rivalled her. Equally resilient is her reputation as a prima donna whose offstage dramas overshadowed her onstage triumphs. Daisy Goodwin’s fourth novel reasserts Callas’s devotion to her craft, depicting a deeply serious artist whose life is lived in service to her prodigious gift. Until, that is, sh ..read more