36 stories by "Steph Power"
Mozart and Da Ponte's The Marriage of Figaro is an exuberant, near-flawless marriage of music and words, and of matters complex and
In Denis and Katya, receiving its UK premiere with Music Theatre Wales, composer Philip Venables and librettist/director Ted Huffman address one of
The Marriage of Figaro was premiered in febrile times, in 1786, on the eve of the French Revolution. Emperor Joseph II had
Janacek was approaching 70 when he composed The Cunning Little Vixen, yet the opera brims with youthful vigour, optimism and music-dramatic innovation.
Welsh National Opera first unveiled James Macdonald's Rigoletto in 2002. At the time, set in a Kennedy-era White House, its portrayal of
When Jake Heggie's opera Dead Man Walking premiered in the US in 2000, it intensified the national debate about capital punishment. Based
"What's occurrin'?" Director-librettist Daisy Evans brings a Barry Island vernacular style to her gleefully anarchic production for Welsh National Opera. She and
It's 30 years since Mid Wales Opera first set out to bring fully staged chamber productions to small, rural communities " and
At his best, Donizetti is a wonderful exponent of the romanticism that emerged in early-1800s Italy, a particularly febrile period in operatic
When censors forbade the onstage depiction of regicide, Verdi was forced to relocate his 1859 Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball)
Only Mozart could so deftly have celebrated the Age of Enlightenment through an opera spanning moral philosophy, high drama, fairytale romance "
There are many layers of wit and sophistication to Ravel's 1911 first opera, L’heure Espagnole. Short but brilliantly inventive, on the one
When Stendhal heard La Cenerentola a few years after its 1817 premiere he branded it trivial and vulgar. Post-French Revolution, Rossini's noisy
A hundred years since the end of World War One " the war supposedly to end all wars " armed conflicts around
It's hard to overstate the social radicalism for its time of Verdi's La Traviata. Even today, over 160 years since its 1853
Under director Kully Thiarai, National Theatre Wales is sharpening its resolve to be a people's theatre. Tide Whisperer, a new site-specific work
Thanks to its gargantuan forces " with more than 60 named roles and a vast chorus reflecting its epic novel forbear "
It's an understatement that Viscountess Rhondda, Margaret Haig Mackworth (née Thomas), has suffered historical neglect. A pioneering Welsh suffragette and businesswoman; a
Opera may have a reputation in the UK for being 'toffee-nosed and corporate' but the genre is blossoming across the country. Steph
With its mile-a-minute patter, and more visual gags than you can shake a tickling stick at " Imogen Garner's Berta wields a
When Eugene Onegin premiered in 1879, it was at the Moscow Conservatory rather than a prestigious opera house, and with a student
It's ironic that Welsh National Opera have revived director John Caird's Don Giovanni at this juncture in their history: in 2011, the
The Torch Theatre has been servicing west Wales and further afield with classic and new theatre for 40 years. Artistic director Peter
It should be no surprise that Thomas Ades, arch modern-day composer of parody and social satire, has expressed deep admiration for the
Ten years before she was finally appointed the first ever woman poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy turned myth and history on their
