Performer: Oliver Hunt

A top-notch adaptation of a very scary folktale into a dynamic new opera, and an interesting meditation on cultural crisis in modern Iran, makes for a superb night at Tête à Tête. 

Fulham Opera's intense, beautiful, powerful opening to their Ring cycle at the lovely St John's Church in Fulham was a privilege to watch, and promises well for all remaining nights.

For any opera company to mount a Wagner opera is a great undertaking. For a very small semi-professional opera company to mount the entire Ring cycle is a feat of extraordinary daring and perhaps madness. But that is exactly what Fulham Opera has decided to do.

It had lain in the archives of the British Library since around 1986. Now, rediscovered by a PhD student and transcribed by Stephen Anthony-Brown, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s opera Thelma has at last received its world première in the capable hands of Surrey Opera.It’s a small miracle that Thelma, written between 1907 and 1909, came to be performed at all.