'Opera has never been more alive' | Simon Callow

Opera is thrilling, vibrant, versatile – and thriving. In fact, there has never been a better time to fall in love with the art formRichard Wagner, that shameless schmoozer, self-publicist, serial womaniser, fetishist, antisemite and torturer of the German language, also arguably took opera to its greatest heights, and he coined a word for it which, if not perhaps the catchiest of labels, nevertheless sums up the potential and the peculiar glory of opera: Gesamstkunstwerk, the total work of ar...

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