Seraphic Melody to Make

“Love conquers all.” Too often this phrase has been repeated, yet too true this statement has proven. Rather than just being a passionate emotion in which desires of the world and flesh prevail, true love is a genuine feeling which trials or extreme evil cannot break, even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Until the last decade or so, becoming involved in the historically-informed performance practice (HIPP) movement – which involves performing on instruments of a composer’s historical period – was not so “hip.

Guest conductor Harry Bicket brings a sense of urgency to Mozart's Requiem and pulse-quickening energy to Symphony no. 40.

The London Handel Festival offers a chance to hear rarely performed music for Passiontide, with Harry Bicket conducting the English Concert. 

Sir David Pountney directs a satirical take on dictatorship and the climate crisis inventively set to the music of Purcell. 

The COC revival of its 2016 production of Le nozze di Figaro is still rooted in Claus Guth’s gloomy Scandinavia but it’s lightened up to become much sexier and funnier.