Canadian-born Mel Cooper came to the UK to study at Oxford and stayed, captivated by the culture and history of the welcoming and tolerant society of Britain.
He founded the magazine Opera Now. He was a consultant to the Japanese broadcaster NHK, a broadcaster on British Satellite Broadcasting and a member of the team that started Classic FM on which he broadcast shows like Classic America and Authentic Performance. After working with the Genesis Foundation on helping to fund arts projects, he continues to write, review and lecture on music and literature.
The Welsh National Opera have again produced a “reduced” version of an opera to tour small scale and mid-sized venues throughout this summer. Except t...
The new Longborough Opera Festival production of Das Rheingold approximates, within the “given” of its setting and budget, just about everything that ...
I liked Napoli, Brooklyn. I found it interesting, though in the end it just didn’t quite add up for me. Set in Brooklyn in 1960, the story of three da...
The Provoked Wife by John Vanbrugh is given a production that it truly deserves at the RSC, pivoting cleverly between disgust with human mendacity and...
The new production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest at the Watermill Theatre near Newbury is another success for this fascinating and ...
Mel Cooper talks to the conductor and founder of the Classic Opera company about the latest step in his Project 250 and also meets the show’s director...
Macheath was conceived as a loveable rogue, a highwayman type, in the original John Gay send-up of opera, politics, society and greed, The Beggar’s Op...
I try to accept “the given” of anything I see. But I am afraid that this time I simply cannot accept Club Tropicana. I tried. I wanted to enjoy it. I ...
The new Headlong production of Shakespeare’s Richard III is to be seen if possible because of the intelligent and thoughtful direction by John Haidar ...
