The best thing I saw in 2025 was Festen
It’s a dazzling, shocking, and entertaining 100 minutes – one of the best new operas I’ve seen.
Mark-Anthony Turnage
7 pieces since 2010.
7
pieces
17
years
A boy’s best friend
At the opening of the Scottish Opera’s 2017 production of Turnage’s opera Greek, I was very sorry I’d missed Anna Nicole.
Girl, next door
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.
Hooterdämmerung
Is there anything more essentially operatic than the suffering of women?
Rex appeal
Say this about Oedipus: The character’s got staying power.
I am a camera
I would never have imagined that the story of Anna Nicole Smith could be today’s entry in a long line of opera’s “fallen women”—pop culture’s reinvention of Violetta, Manon Lescaut, and Lulu. But that is indeed what composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Richard Thomas have created in Anna Nicole, commissioned by England’s Royal Opera House […]
Batter my disc
I have heard Gerald Finley live and enjoyed his singing immensely. He possesses a strong, resonant, lyric baritone, even of scale and beautiful of timbre. His biggest successes to date have been creating the roles of Oppenheimer in John Adams‘ Dr. Atomic and Harry in Mark-Anthony Turnage‘s The Silver Tassie. He includes selections from both […]
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).