Joyce El-Khoury on being thrown to Donizetti's lions.

Baroque specialist, harpsichordist and pioneering conductor of Handel opera passes at 80. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

We get to the bottom of the quirky British vocal ensemble and its ‘beany’ Italian name.

★★★★★ Donizetti was one of the most prolific opera composers of all time, an appealingly personable fellow (if you read the letters), and an extraordinary professional capable of turning out a work in just a few weeks. That very facility though has led to a general dismissal of his music as too easy, rushed, derivative, or worse. Les Martyrs disproves all of these. A late work (1840), this grandest of his French grand operas was written simultaneously with the slighter, yet inexplicably more popular La Fille du Régiment, but the two works couldn’t be more different – one a trivially sucrose French confection, the other a profound meditation on faith and duty. But while Daughter of the Regiment went on to conquer the world, Les Martyrs sank without a trace. That latter statement isn’t entirely true. Les Martyrs was itself an expanded reworking of Poliuto, an opera Donizetti had written for Naples that fell foul of the censors and so never made it to the stage. Poliuto has been championed intermittently over the years (there’s a superb live version with Callas, Corelli and Bastianini) and Glyndebourne have just given its British premiere, but Les Martyrs is a horse of a…

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The 66-year-old Italian bass talks to Limelight about Kings, Christoff, Karajan and the secret of vocal longevity. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The mighty Canadian tenor who redefined Peter Grimes passes at 88. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Eclectic French programme makes for a sublimely reflective evening. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Limelight’s Editor meets the American Turandot all set to be the next Aussie Brünnhilde. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

★★★★☆ Interested in the contenders for the bulkiest opera of all time? Look no further than Havergal Brian’s The Tigers. Yes, if you thought his Gothic Symphony was impractical you ain’t seen nothing yet! Composed between 1917 and 1919, and scored for massive orchestra (including five tubas, harmonica, three timpani players, thunder machine, ship’s siren, two vibraphones, tubaphone(!) and organ), the work has never been staged. The full score was lost until the Brian Society put out a reward for its recovery, and the plucky BBC made a radio recording back in 1983. That performance, thanks to Testament, is now available on three discs. The opera concerns the (at times mystifying) bumbling antics of a regiment known as The Tigers on manoeuvres in the Home Counties. But Brian isn’t just offering a semi-Straussian comic opera. There are dream ballets for gargoyles come to life, a commedia dell’arte fantasy and the massive opening scene on Hampstead Heath (which calls for an elephant!) culminates in a huge set of orchestral variations on Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly. Ambitious! The fine cast comprises many of the top British singers of the day (including the likes of Teresa Cahill, Marilyn Hill-Smith, Alan Opie and…