Allison Cook

Allison Cook is a singer who defies definitions and is fearless in the risks she takes on stage, finding depth and humanity in characters who are mad, bad and dangerous to know. Francis Carlin visits the daringly different Scottish singer in her Parisian home

As musicals increasingly become a regular feature in opera companies around the world, is resistance to their presence in the opera house just old-fashioned snobbery or are there real artistic drawbacks to diluting the mainstream operatic fare? Antonia Couling discovers that musicals can provide a lifeline that draws new audiences into the world of opera.

Among the most versatile of all 20th-century divas, Jarmila Novotná showered her audiences with a homely warmth and delicate charm redolent of a bygone age in Europe, before the ravages of Hitler. The publication of her memoirs throws new light on this appealing artist and her abiding love of her Czech homeland

As opera companies around the world launch their 2018/19 seasons, Opera Now catches up on the latest news and highlights during the autumn months

American soprano Kelli O’Hara won a Tony award for her role as Anna Leonowens in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I, currently in London’s West End; but her thorough all-round music theatre training and attractive, expressive singing is increasingly bringing her to the attention of major opera houses.

Professor Anthony Ogus ventured to the northern climes of Iceland, where the drama of untamed nature found parallels in the searing emotions of a new opera, Brothers, by an exciting young Icelandic composer who is making his mark on the world stage