ABOUT BLOODY TIME TOO: FINALLY, a statue is to be raised to London’s transgender sex workers, right outside the ENO, on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. Let’s hope they dedicate an opera to these unsung heroes: it would make a joyous change from modern English opera’s obsession with child abuse and allied miserablisms, and as anyone whose horizons have been abruptly expanded in some Bangkok love-bower would have to agree, it would fit perfectly into that other, jollier strain of our native lyric drama, orgiastic, sensual, sexually all-embracing, featuring such marvels as Handel’s Alcina and Michael Tippett’s free-for-all love-feast, The Midsummer Marriage.
NOW THAT IT’S ILLEGAL TO SUGGEST any positive angles in the country’s sordid, vicious history, opera finds itself in the odd position of being English culture’s last…
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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2024