MY VERSION OF EVENTS....

Some of you may wish to look away now; I may say nice things about critics. It may not have escaped your attention that I was at Oxford University this week to see my daughter graduate: anybody who has read of my school experiences will know quite how far she has fallen from the tree in achieving what she has. I am obviously as proud as punch. The ceremony - in Latin - was in a place that had me thinking a bit more about the role of the theatre in our lives. The Sheldonian is a magnificent 17th century building, designed by Sir Christopher Wren and has been the venue for the university's graduation ceremonies for nearly four centuries; the history is soaked into the walls. What kept going through my mind as I sat in that place, where tens of thousands of young people have emerged from years of learning (apart from quite how dreadfully I treated my own education) is how everything we are as a nation, as a species even, is related to the arts, culture and learning. And then fo...

I have been doing a lot of moaning recently (I hear you groan). The world of opera has been busily peeing on its own shoes for the past few months and I have found cause to groan variously about social media, sexing up and the objectification of singers, booing, the obsession with digital, body-shaming and whether or not the art form is a class-based private members club.  We spend too much time talking about opera and not just "doing" opera. We seem to be the pariah art form, frightening to, and caricatured by, the narrow-minded, ill-informed media to which our response is often to become strident, cocksure and full of braggadocio, but we still anxiously check ourselves in the mirror, only to dissolve into self-doubt again. Frankly, we are all over the place,  focused on new audiences but not necessarily concerning ourselves with the audience we already have. The latter is occupying me more right now; the changing behaviour and conservatism of existing opera audiences in the...

It has been what you might call a compact weekend of openings at OHP. On Saturday, framed by the weather in a way only the British will really understand, we opened the revival of Will Todd's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in the afternoon and Norma in the evening.  A heatwave is upon us but the dire warnings from the Met office were reassuringly and familiarly wrong and the day was a glorious one - so Alice stayed in her usual home on the Yucca Lawn. In the evening a much grander affair in the form of Bellini's High Priestess wove its magic through the warm and heavy night air. I had a more  personal interest than usual in the show since my five year old daughter Fiora is in it; the party afterwards was quickly and almost entirely dedicated, at her insistence, to her and her friend Davina, also in the production as one of Norma's two children. Nobody in attendance had any choice in the matter and if you think stage-generated adrenalin in singers is a thing to behol...

Yesterday, as the sun blazed, was a good day. More importantly, I heard a blisteringly good sitzprobe of Adriana Lecouvreur .   Yesterday was a feast. I was like a kid in a sweetshop and it was entertaining to see the reaction of people who were in the theatre but who did not know Adriana , including more than one "it's my new favourite opera!". We of course did Adriana before in 2002 so we think we know it - and obviously, we do - but age and experience makes you listen differently and to hear the fluidity of the narrative music, the orchestral colours, the new interpretations of these particular singers and the very length, breadth and depth of the score is still - always - a revelation. Outside the theatre, in the park, whose users we provide regular "free" concerts for during rehearsals and performances, people stopped, gathered, listened and chatted excitedly about this "gorgeous music", as if in shock that they had never heard something so sumpt...

During the months of recent self-examination by the opera world and its constant battles with itself and others, it has been easy to forget about the art itself. I do think that in the operatic firmament, there is a great deal wrong (about which, more soon, elsewhere) and at times it can feel quite apocalyptic but there goes along with that a feeling that whatever "problems" exist, they are temporary, cyclical. I suppose we should know relatively soon towards what fate we are all striding, at turns bellicose and defiant, or anxious, self-regarding, timid and supplicant to the great combined Gods of digital and one dimensional new-audience gratification. Paddy Power should open a book. But what has certainly struck me recently after watching several rehearsals and performances is just how unchanged the art form is on a very simple level. After 25 years of doing it, I am aware that opera is just the same, provokes the same emotions, the same concerns, the same cynical examin...

Some of you may know that at OHP, James has become our resident mixologist, inventing along with his wife Angela, cocktails for each opera. Members of the tasting panel (me and a couple of members of the team) have to go through an arduous process of trying out different iterations of each creation before we give it the rubber stamp....ahem So it is with some pleasure that we learn James has arranged for one of his inspirational figures, Tony Conigliaro to do something similar in the theatre on 30th July. The copy below is hot off the press and hasn't gone on our website yet, so consider this a sneak preview, you lucky people. What's not to like? Very special and very exclusive. Don't miss it. Cocktails and Opera! Opera Holland Park is proud to announce a spectacular evening of world-class mixology and glorious opera.   No list of London's best cocktail bars is complete without mention of Tony Conigliaro. An expert alchemist and award-winning barman, his inventive drink...

I see there has been more booing at The ROH production of Maria Stuarda .   I always wonder why it is that audiences boo.  Opera audiences can get extremely cross about interpretations of their favourite operas, especially the classics. I don't really want to address why they do that - a whole other discussion is need for that - but am more concerned with the need, the irresistible urge even, to be outraged by a director's interpretation and to give voice to that frustration. Personally, I think diminutive, faux-polite applause is far more withering an expression of opinion. Booing is of course our favourite expression of disgust or disapproval. The pantomime booing of Scarpia or any other "bad guy" during curtain calls, followed quickly by the rise in amplitude of applause as a sort of "nah, we were only joking, you were great" is standard practice now it seems, so booing isn't always angry. Having said that, I don't think I have ever heard a chorus...

Someone recently asked me why there was such a big deal about us doing our first Britten opera and it is true that much has been made of our first foray into Britten's repertoire, both by the critical press as well as ourselves.  It may seem odd that an opera company should approach a particular composer with trepidation ("opera company produces an opera shocker") but it isn't terribly surprising. Despite our reputation for lunacies and a long list of scarcely heard of Italian composers we do in fact have quite a wide repertory history that includes Janacek, Tchaikovsky, Menotti, some French romantics and Beethoven. But certain composers we have always been wary of; like the first, hesitant, almost-did-it-that-time attempt  to jump off top diving board at the swimming baths. Strauss is one, Wagner is most certainly another and so is (was) Britten.  Yes, there are question marks about the economics of a composer who will never sell as well as Puccini in a house like ou...