Fernando Herrera
Fernando Herrera is a London-based engineer who discovered opera through his grandmother’s piano reduction scores and cheap CDs bought at newsstands. When he moved to Madrid he became a regular at Teatro Real using the “under 26” ticket scheme. Now he is trying to catch up with the busy musical life of London.
Only time can tell if some performances enter the collective opera memory, if such a thing even exists, as “historical”
For this revival of Tosca Teatro Real has configured several casts with some of the best singers in the world: Sondra Radvanovsky, Maria Agresta, Anna Netrebko, Joseph Calleja, Michael Fabiano, Yusif Eyvazov, Jonas Kaufmann, Carlos Álvarez, Gevorg Hakobyan and Luca Salsi.
As soon as James Clutton, the new Opera Holland Park director, stepped on stage to welcome the audience, we all knew that we were not at the typical English summer opera festival.
What a joy when a comic opera gets you cackling through the whole night, discovering new nuances and perspectives from an oft-seen work and delighted with wonderful singing!
Rigoletto at Circo Massimo was my first opera since the lockdown started in March.
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The dream cast put together for this second revival of Kasper Holten’s Don Giovanni production shines at the Royal Opera House.
In less than 10 days two outstanding countertenors, Franco Fagioli and Jakub Józef Orlinski, visited London.
There was a lot expectation about the new opera by George Benjamin and Martin Crimp. Their previous collaboration, Written on Skin, was an enormous critical and public success, earning the work a place in the exclusive club of 21th century classics with selected works by Saariaho, Heggie and Birtwistle.
This revival of Phyllida Lloyd’s 2002 Macbeth production was probably the most anticipated event of the Royal Opera House 2017/2018 season, due mostly to Anna Netrebko’s return to Covent Garden after a three-year absence.
Writing an opera for kids based on Neil Gaiman‘s successful children’s novel Coraline must have been a double challenge for Rory Mullarkey and Mark-Anthony Turnage.
A new production of La traviata by Daniel Kramer, the current artistic director of ENO, brings fresh ideas to the classic drama.
Amadigi di Gaula performed the Opera Settecento orchestra last Saturday night at St. George—Handel’s own parish church—fit perfectly into the venue.
Tell us: What was the best of 2025?
Parterre Box concludes the thrilling first year of Talk of the Town by inviting your lightning rod opinions on several more categories of operatic argumentation.
