Strauss' mix of bedroom farce, comedy of manners and bittersweet musing about aging is acted and sung superbly in this revival of Richard Jones' production.
Renée Fleming has decided the time is right to bow out gracefully from the operatic stage, choosing her signature role to bid the fondest of farewells to London.
If “all the world’s a jest”, as Sir John Falstaff claims at the end of Verdi’s final operatic masterpiece, then we need players – and directors – with a sense of frivolity. Robert Carsen truly delivers.
The auditorium's lights flared up, drawing a blinking audience back into the room. The fourth wall was well and truly broken, and each of us was given no option but to acknowledge our responsibility for the planet.
With ENO having been in the news for all the wrong reasons last week, it needed Richard Jones' The Mastersingers of Nuremberg to be a great production. Lit up by a towering performance by Iain Paterson, it is.
Ambrogio Maestri reprises his star turn as a vocally and theatrically complete Falstaff in Robert Carsen’s lavish, food-fuelled situational comedy at the Holland Festival.
