How do you complete an opera when its composer has died before finishing it?
22 May 2017
The opera repertory is littered with controversial, posthumously completed works.
Girls being boys being girls: a short history of opera’s trouser roles
11 January 2017
Lovesick teens, feisty young heroes, or supernatural beings – there's an important place for women playing men (then dressing up as women again?) in opera.
10 of the most challenging mezzo-soprano roles
19 December 2016
Carmen isn’t the only sensual starring mezzo role – we round up some of our favourites, from Donizetti to Birtwistle.
Aiming high: 10 of the most challenging soprano roles
15 September 2016
From the Queen of the Night to Turandot by way of Norma and Brünnhilde, we round up some of opera’s most devilishly difficult soprano roles.
Some things are better left unsung: Why composers use speech in opera
2 November 2015
Composers have long explored the gamut of vocal expression from a whisper to a scream.
Experimentation, experimentation, experimentation: Über-radical opera in 1920s Germany
4 March 2015
The political situation in Germany's Weimar Republic contributed to perhaps the most wildly-creative decade in opera's history.
Not-so-easy listening made easier: How to listen to the unfamiliar as well as the familiar
22 July 2014
Schonberg's Moses und Aron may seem daunting, but dip a toe in the water and you might be pleasantly surprised.
Opera's Russian Dolls: the opera-within-an-opera
27 June 2014
Composers from Purcell to Turnage bring the audience onstage by writing them into the music.
10 Operatic Prayers: Divine music in hope of divine intervention
24 April 2014
Operatic characters often look to the heavens, in thanks or in anguished supplication.
Your reaction: Wozzeck
1 November 2013
What did you think of Keith Warner's production of Alban Berg's dark and tragic opera?