★★★☆☆Taking Monteverdi’s three-hour epic about the ruthless rise of Nero’s mistress in imperial Rome on a cross-country tour is quite a gamble. The Coronation of Poppea is arguably the greatest
Lightning sometimes strikes twice. English Touring Opera hit topical gold last spring when, wholly by coincidence, they found themselves touring with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian anti-war satire The Golden Cockerel. Now the company’s general director Robin Norton-Hale insists that their current tour of Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims – written in 1825 to celebrate the coronation of