Kate Lindsey

It was a tough call: when mezzo Kate Lindsey discovered she was pregnant, she conceded that she would have to stand down from a plum role that she was due to sing at Glyndebourne this summer. Her decision highlights the difficult choices that face women in opera as they juggle an ever more precarious life/work balance. Warwick Thompson meets a mezzo who is refreshingly candid about the challenges and rewards of a stellar career as a singer

The emergence of Western opera in a region of the world steeped in Islamic traditions may seem anathema, but the Arabian Peninsula’s rich musical heritage and its ancient art of storytelling have inspired a new generation of composers, writers and musicians to explore opera in a way that reflects contemporary Arabic culture. Robert Turnbull reports from Abu Dhabi

Robert Turnbull sets off on a whirlwind tour of Southeast Asia, where he discovers that a budding and increasingly ambitious opera scene is pooling its resources in order to highlight the region’s young talent and attract new audiences

Silver Birch is a new opera that encourages a younger generation to think about the realities of war and the experience of fighting men and women. Andrew Green signs up to an arts project that has had a profound impact on its participants across a range of ages

Its never too early to start making your plans for opera as the new season approaches, especially in popular opera destinations around the world where tickets are snapped up before you can say ‘Tosca’. Book ahead with the help of Opera Now’s guide to some of the autumn’s most compelling productions

Wasfi Kani, the dynamic CEO of Grange Park Opera, inadvertently picked a day of the utmost national importance – the UK’s 8 June General Election – to inaugurate her company’s new home, the Theatre in the Woods at West Horsley Place. The very existence of this theatre, in the heart of a bucolic stretch of Green Belt less than an hour away from central London, is a logistical miracle

Like all opera companies, Opera North has performed plenty of Puccini in nearly 40 years since it was founded, including relative rarities such as La Rondine – but never until now Turandot. Considering that it includes probably the most popular of all Italian tenor arias, ‘Nessun dorma’, this is perhaps surprising

Director Olivia Fuchs interlocks ideas about history, nostalgia and the end of an era with great imagination, albeit not always subtly. Indeed, it’s the stellar cast – even more than the excellent WNO orchestra, discovering Straussian opulence under conductor Tomáš Hanus – that makes this new production compelling

As an operatic nation, Wales punches well above its weight on the global stage. Yet despite its moniker, ‘Land of Son g’, there persists a dearth of operas that set Welsh-language librettos. Guto Puw’s adroit new work, Y Twr (The Tower), proves groundbreaking on that front and more

A successful opera performance is meant to be the sum of many parts. Sometimes, however, individual forces can triumph over other drawbacks – like a merely passable production or generally less than inspired singing – and leave an audience convinced it has witnessed an event. So it was in this new staging of Debussy’s masterpiece