Classical concerts in London

You don’t need to be an opera buff to appreciate Gilbert & Sullivan’s timeless comic operetta about romantic hijinx on the high seas as self-regarding Captain Corcoran’s efforts to marry his daughter Josephine off to the First Lord of the Admirality run drastically awry. This 2021 production by Cal McCrystal has been praised for its big laughs and good looks, and frankly the odds are you’ll know the basics of the story thanks to the Cape Feare episode of The Simpsons. Neal Davis plays the Rt Hon Sir Joseph Porter, the First Lord of the Admiralty, joined by ENO-favourite and G&S expert John Savournin who reprises the role of Captain Corcoran, with his daughter Josephine is played Henna Mun. Beloved entertainer Mel Giedroyc will take on a non-specified non-singing role.

It’s been four years since Mozart’s revered comedy was performed on a London stage, but the English National Opera’s upcoming production of Così fan tutte has had some whimsy injected thanks to a collaboration with Improbable, an improv-based theatre company. The opera follows the outcome the cynical placing of a bet by two soldiers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, that if tested their fiancées, Fiordiligi and Dorabella, would have affairs, and soprano Lucy Crowe OBE and mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven are starring as the two sisters.  With Olivier Award-winner Phelim McDermott at the helm and Critics’ Circle Young Talent Award winner Dinis Sousa conducting, this co-production (in partnership with New York’s Metropolitan Opera), written originally at the height of Mozart’s career in the 1790s, has now been transformed by set (by Tom Pye) and costume design (by Laura Hopkins) to unfurl on 1950s Coney Island.