Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

John Allison

John Allison

John Allison has been Editor of Opera magazine since 2000.

'Das Rheingold: The opening of Barrie Kosky’s new Ring' by John Allison

ABR Arts 25 September 2023
Wagnerians are like elephants: they never forget. Though the Royal Opera House may have become less conscientious about printing performance histories in its handsome red-covered programs, for many the memories of past Ring cycles at Covent Garden live on. That may not always be a healthy thing – there are of course few more necrophiliac artforms than opera – but it’s impossible to view the ... (read more)

John Allison reviews 'Chopin’s Piano: A journey through Romanticism' by Paul Kildea

September 2018, no. 404 24 August 2018
Some things are easier to lose than others, but how does a piano come to be mislaid? When that piano has been lugged up and down an island mountain, made one – perhaps two – sea crossings, and been looted by the Nazis, there could be any number of causes for its disappearance, but something more recent and mysterious has led to this now 180-year-old instrument remaining hidden, maybe in plain ... (read more)

Otello (Royal Opera House)

ABR Arts 26 June 2017
When the world’s most famous tenor tackles one of the most famously challenging of all tenor roles, the scene ought to be set for an evening of tension and drama. Only some of that tension and drama, however, actually came from the stage of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden when Jonas Kaufmann made his début in the title role of Verdi’s penultimate opera. There was just as much tension and ... (read more)

John Allison reviews 'My Life with Wagner' by Christian Thielemann

December 2015, no. 377 25 November 2015
'This has been an eventful year for Christian Thielemann, the self-styled Dirigent-Überall of German conductors. After several seasons of speculation about his next career move, in June he lost out on becoming chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic but almost simultaneously landed the music directorship of the Bayreuth Festival. That post at the Wagnerian shrine in northern Bavaria had not of ... (read more)