London opera and classical music: April highlights
Baroque household names and contemporary classics, timeless favourites and shocking new productions: here's your guide to the must-see London classical music and opera this month
Madama Butterfly, Royal Opera House
Puccini’s tragic opera Madama Butterfly is a jewel in the crown of the Royal Opera House. This production, first staged in 2003, continues to offer one of the most ravishing spectacles at Covent Garden.
Read more ...Holy Week Festival, St John's Smith Square
St John's Smith Square has become the place to go for atmospheric Christmas music, and now, for the first time, there is to be a festival of music suitable for Holy Week and Easter.
Read more ...London Handel Festival 2017
Every year the festival of all things George Frideric Handel celebrates not only the composer's vast and engaging output, but also his practice of encouraging new young performers.
Read more ...Bach's Coffee Cantata, Charterhouse
Blue hair, peacock mask, double-dealing .... it's not the usual image of JS Bach, but his Coffee Cantata is a little light relief from his more familiar sacred music. And three performances in the London Handel Festival will also admit Culture Whisper readers to the ancient Charterhouse.
Read more ...The Exterminating Angel, Royal Opera House
Thomas Adès is one of the most innovative and exciting contemporary composers, and all eyes will be on the British premiere of his new opera, The Exterminating Angel. A cultivated, glamorous in-crowd gathers in an elegant setting, but the evening takes a terrible turn.
Pop-Up Opera, I Capuleti e i Montecchi
Many composers rose to the challenge of setting Shakespeare's great dramas to music, but few were as successful as Bellini, whose operatic Romeo and Juliet, I Montecchi e i Capuletti, is being staged by Pop-Up Opera.
Read more ...John Adams's Doctor Atomic, Barbican Hall
What went through the minds of the team that created the first atomic
bomb? That's the question that this sage composer addresses in his
important work from 2005, in a concert performance at the Barbican.