We're less easily shocked today. But watching Florentine Opera's new production of "Carmen," it's easy to see what startled its Parisian audience when Bizet's opera debuted in 1875. Carmen's brazen ...

A massive crystal chandelier descended from the ceiling of the Orpheum Theatre’s house as its lights flickered and the classic “The Phantom of the Opera” theme boomed throughout the theater. Curtains ...

Hon Research Fellow in Poetry and Theatre studies, The University of Western Australia As the overture ends, the red curtains at His Majesty’s Theatre rise to reveal a flat, white floor-to-ceiling ...

Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s Follies is, arguably, the ultimate Broadway musical, so it is hardly surprising that Northern Ireland Opera would have it firmly on its to-do list. But gone are ...

Few do spectacle as well as Cameron Mackintosh. And his rejiggered version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” is as much a spectacle as it was when Mackintosh first produced it nearly ...

“The Magic Flute” has enchanted audiences ever since it opened in 1791, just months before Mozart’s untimely death. On the surface, “Flute” is a fairy tale about a prince who sets out to rescue a ...

Puccini’s Turandot, with its combination of myth, ritual and emotional extremity, suits dark evenings and the build-up to Christmas, when audiences seem especially ready for spectacle and intensity.