George Gagnidze

With his large, earthy baritone voice and a powerful stage presence, George Gagnidze is is one of today’s leading dramatic baritones who has taken the world’s major opera stages by storm. He talks to Victoria Ivleva-Yorke about his unusual musical upbringing in war-torn Soviet Georgia and some of the roles that have come to define his career so far

After the ructions and upheavals of last year, it’s business as usual for opera at Northington Grange with the launch of a new festival headed by one of Britain’s most eminent singers. Robert Thicknesse talks to artistic director Michael Chance about what may prove the most challenging role of his career

Six years after his death at the age of 56, Steve Jobs has achieved an almost mythical status as the cultural icon and technological innovator behind Apple. A new opera, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, receives its much-anticipated world premiere at Santa Fe Opera in July. Thomas May meets the creative team who have incorporated a few innovations of their own to tell the story of a worldchanging legend.

In this year’s Glyndebourne Festival, the British tenor Allan Clayton will create the role of Hamlet in a new opera by Australian composer Brett Dean and Canadian librettist Matthew Jocelyn. As he prepares for opening night on 11 June, the singer describes how he and the creative team have worked together to throw new light on a cultural icon

The great German bass Kurt Moll (1938-2017) won renown for his exceptional mastery of beautiful legato singing, influenced by his early training as a cellist. His was a relaxed, gentle voice that maintained its brilliance and focus, even as it descended to its ultra-profound depths

Thomas Adès’ score for The Exterminating Angel is, like the characters in his opera, dressed to impress: the composer gives us a slick, stylish demonstration of his exceedingly clever way with sound, exploring what seems like every musical form under the sun. What all this exuberant symphonic brilliance lacks, however, is any real dramatic coherence

Festival focus

Radamisto is an opera about distressed souls and the notion of distress itself – with its antonyms, comfort, love, forgivenes, fidelity. The howls of the tormented wives Zenobia and Polissena remind you of the Verdi of Trovatore: lonely laments spinning off into space. The characters are subjected to intolerable pressure, revealing the spiritual resources that make them human

Motorists in Monaco know that the principality is fascinated by tunnels; but it is a pity that Louis Désiré’s set for this new production of Il trovatore constrained Verdi’s sprawling opera into such a cramped, rigid perspective

An enfant terrible, Dmitri Tcherniakov? Not necessarily when he takes on Russian folklore, where he can go soft and half-hearted. Warm applause during a director’s curtain call in Paris is generally a sign of an unchallenging staging – as was the case here