A deeply human Messiah comes to Spoleto Festival USA

Imagine waiting for a long time. You can’t see anything, so you can’t entirely trust your unfamiliar surroundings. Imagine heightened senses: sounds with sharper edges, drafts of air crawling across goosebumped skin, scents stretching out to you in the darkness. Imagine an opera in which the performers can watch the audience rather than the other way around.

Mark Ravenhill directs a brutal, bloody Salome for Regents Opera at the spiritual home of British boxing, York Hall. 

Divorced from Cavalleria rusticana, English Touring Opera’s contemporary take on Leoncavallo’s masterpiece ticks all the boxes.

Robert Carsen’s staging of Handel's oratorio arrives, via Salzburg, in the city where Handel composed it in 1707. 

At the Metropolitan Opera, Innocence proves a gripping and perhaps divisive piece which feels real because it is a reflection of our reality, with no realistic hope of finding peace.