Opera

Tears and catharsis as Kyiv premieres opera about Ukrainian children abducted by Russia

First lady and affected families in audience for highly charged performance of excerpts of Mothers of KhersonIt was hard to imagine an opera with a subject more potentially traumatic – or cathartic – for the assembled audience. The occasion, in the grand and gilded spaces of the National Opera of Ukraine, in Kyiv, was the premiere of excerpts of Mothers of Kherson, an opera about the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russian occupiers – a continuing, raw story of real-life loss and agony....

Opera's latest Android update includes a soccer hub and a refreshed start page

Opera's latest Android update includes a soccer hub and a refreshed start page You can see live scores for ongoing games and follow your favorite teams for notifications. Opera has released a new version of its web browser for Android. It has a refreshed start page design and, just in time for the World Cup kicking off this week, a soccer hub that features live scores, stats and match notifications.

Orlando review – a confident romp through Handel’s flimsily plotted opera

Longborough Festival Opera, Moreton-in-MarshSinéad O’Neill’s production is persuasive and Beth Taylor’s performace as Orlando is extraordinary in this tale of unrequited love, madness and magicThe woodland outside Longborough’s theatre, deep in the Cotswolds, sneaks inside and on to the stage for its season-opening production of Orlando. With a story that sometimes seems little more than an excuse for a series of showpiece arias, it’s not an obvious choice for the festival’s first Handel...

Orlando review – a confident romp through Handel’s flimsily plotted opera

Longborough Festival Opera, Moreton-in-MarshSinéad O’Neill’s production is persuasive and Beth Taylor’s performace as Orlando is extraordinary in this tale of unrequited love, madness and magicThe woodland outside Longborough’s theatre, deep in the Cotswolds, sneaks inside and on to the stage for its season-opening production of Orlando. With a story that sometimes seems little more than an excuse for a series of showpiece arias, it’s not an obvious choice for the festival’s first Handel...

‘A Pavarotti rebirth’: the Samoan tenor taking over the world’s most gilded opera stages

Born on a tiny, impoverished South Pacific island, Pene Pati remembers going to school without food. Now he is performing in operas at La Scala and the MetAlong roads of scarlet hibiscus and exuberant tropical foliage are the white churches of Samoa. On Sundays the choir, singing in pure harmony, rises up to the cathedral ceilings in one soaring voice of divinity.

Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Edge, Opera to follow

For a while now the transition away from Manifest V2 (MV2) to MV3 has been on-going and it looks like it is entering its final phase of deprecation, at least, in the case of Google Chrome. A recent discussion thread in the w3c WebExtensions Community Group GitHub repo has highlighted how the latest and upcoming versions of the most popular browser are expected to be its final releases with support for MV2 extensions. Chromium contributor Andrey Bershanskiy shared details about recent...

Ex-lawmaker Lo Wai-kwok, 73, to marry Cantonese opera actress 42 years his junior

‘Nature’s soap opera’: how a wildlife artist’s nestboxes became a YouTube hit

The births, fledgling flights and even first dates on Robert Fuller’s site are about to hit a million global subscribersHaving enjoyed setting up bird boxes with his father as a child, the wildlife artist Robert Fuller wanted to go one step further. While he happily spent hours making the boxes and dotting them around the Yorkshire Wolds, he found it tantalising that he was unable to see exactly what the nesting owls, kestrels and kingfishers were up to.It transpires Fuller was not alone in...

‘Nature’s soap opera’: how a wildlife artist’s nestboxes became a YouTube hit

The births, fledgling flights and even first dates on Robert Fuller’s site are about to hit a million global subscribersHaving enjoyed setting up bird boxes with his father as a child, the wildlife artist Robert Fuller wanted to go one step further. While he happily spent hours making the boxes and dotting them around the Yorkshire Wolds, he found it tantalising that he was unable to see exactly what the nesting owls, kestrels and kingfishers were up to.It transpires Fuller was not alone in...

Krishna review – the mystery of John Tavener’s ‘mystic pantomime’ is why it has been staged

Grange Park Opera, West Horsley, SurreySingers and orchestra toiled admirably with this posthumous world premiere about the Hindu god, complete with inflatable deadly serpent. But the work feels straight from the 19th-century Orientalism playbookThe first thing you should know about John Tavener’s 2005 opera Krishna is that it is actually a “mystical pantomime”. If that very idea provokes even the faintest amusement, this is not the country-house opera for you.