Richard Morrison
It’s surely not just fussy critics who get fed up with the same 20-odd operas being endlessly recycled. Opera houses lapse into that lazy form of programming, of course, because they regard Carmen, Bohème, Figaro, Traviata and the others in that magic circle as box-office bankers – all the more necessary for improving finances after the disruption of the past 18 months.
Yet I believe that regular opera audiences as well as critics (see p46). Opera Rara clearly has a following for its work, as do those festivals bold enough to specialise in reviving pieces that have been ignored for decades, if not centuries.
