"Honourably" means, from director Olivia Fuchs's perspective, tackling head-on the distasteful plot in which a girl young enough still to be playing with dollies is drugged and carted off by a ...

It probably would have been worth the trip to Bard SummerScape's production of Pietro Mascagni's IRIS--last heard at the Met in 1931--simply to make the acquaintance of soprano Talise Trevigne.

The opera isn't for everyone. Whether it’s something as traditional and esoteric as Philip Glass' Akhnaten or groundbreaking as The Who's rock saga Tommy, an “opera” makes one think of acting, scenery ...

None is more abused than the heroine of Iris, Pietro Mascagni’s rarely performed tragedy about an innocent Japanese girl abducted into a brothel and driven to commit suicide. Premiered in 1898, six ...

Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. A rare opera needs its champions. Somebody at Opera Holland Park clearly loves Mascagni’s Iris, a pioneering Japanese ...

Mascagni is more arthritic in his sense of movement – think of how long the plot of Cavalleria Rusticana takes to get going – and sometimes strives hard for those orchestral effects which seem so ...