Just announced. Randall Shannon will move on from his Executive Director role at Wexford Festival Opera on 14th February, when his contract ends.

Parachuted in as an interim replacement is Loughlin Deegan, a freelance consultant.

Despite the ritual Wexford ‘wished Randall all the very best for his future projects,’ to the Scuttlebutt nostrils, this smells like trouble at the Wexford mill. The hound hears the sound of teeth grinding.

Deegan – who has, thankfully, experience directing The Dublin Theatre Festival for five years – is tasked to deliver this year’s festival alongside Artistic Director, Rosetta Cucchi.

Dominic Sandbrook, the historian/podcaster/columnist has joined forces with composer Joseph Phibbs to awaken the dead. Sandbrook co-hosts podcast The Rest is Politics. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Marking Margaret Thatcher’s 100th birth-centenary an opera focused on her celebrated defenestration at the hands of shafted Chancellor Geoffrey Howe ‘with his wife Elspeth as a sort of Lady Macbeth character’, will take to the stage….. (drum roll, cue lights, buy that popcorn) …. When? Where?

Er, …. no one seems to know. Sandbrook has never written a libretto. Phibbs has written one chamber opera, Juliana in 2018. The perfect pairing of opera neophytes. Further announcements in the Spring. Scuttlebutt sniffs the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Don’t expect a 1987 reprise of John Adams’ epoch capturing Nixon in China.

Scuttlebutt offers some helpful guidance on casting. Surely Mrs T., must be Kathryn Lewek, the Connecticut soprano who has blasted out 30 plus Queen of the Night arias in Mozart’s Magic Flute. Especially as Florence Foster Jenkins is no longer around to shriek the role.

And Geoffrey Howe must be a castrato role – because back in 1990 Mogadon Man, as he was known, well and truly was. Even though Mrs T. was forced out of Downing Street three weeks later. The Master hopes to audition as a supernumerary.

Eugene Onegin is one of the Master’s beloved operas. (There are too many). But when he turned up expectantly at The Royal Opera House, the cast seemed to have lost their voices.

Because they were ballet dancers.

Not being a Plié, Pointe, Porte de Bras sort of person (he thinks that Pas de bourrée is spread on bread), the M. was astonished.

Onegin was created by impresario John Cranko in 1965 for his own Stuttgart Ballet. Score by Kurt-Heinz Stolze based on, mostly, orchestrated Tchaikovsky piano works. The translation was artfully done.

In a stunning revival overseen by Reid Anderson, it is the perfect ‘story ballet’. Beautifully crafted.

And she who dislikes opera had a grand night out. There were two intervals.

The annual awards ceremony will be on November 13^th, 2025, at the Stavros Niarchos Hall, Athens. 

Harry Hyman, Founder of the International Opera Awards announcing the venue said, “We’re thrilled to bring the International Opera Awards to Athens for the first time, and to continue to celebrate the truly international artform of opera.”

Last year the Master presented the Best Festival Award in Munich. He is keeping his hopes up! Tuxedo on call. 

Ms Davidsen has joyous news. She is to be the mother of twins, requiring a discreet withdrawal from performances from March until 2026. Scuttlebutt offers congratulations. 

The Master is jubilant. He’s a big fan. She is squeezing in a run as Leonora – Beethoven’s Fidelio – at the Met in March, where she will also be a welcome guest at The Metropolitan Opera Club. 

The Master has tipped me off that Dr. Harry Brunjes, (he’s a real quack) Chairman of English National Opera has stepped down. As an interim appointment, Deputy Chair of ENO Louise Jeffries will oversee the process of seeking a permanent replacement.

Time to hail Harry, who steered the ENO ship through almost impossible waters, most recently Covid, followed by the almost catastrophic Arts Council England 2022 plan to cut its funding to zero.

What is certain is that most Chairs with legs chopped off would have collapsed. Not Harry. He led his Board and team into battle. Eventually ENO was thrown a lifeline of £24m – on condition it shifted to Manchester, which came as surprising news to Opera North, based in nearby Leeds.

Time for congratulations on a watch that brought us La bohème in a car park (not any old, Alexandra Palace) and the ENO Breathe initiative, teaching Covid sufferers operatic breathing tricks. Plus many fine onstage productions.

Harry and his wife, Jacquie will not rest on their laurels. Their music hall genes saw them singing at the Met – The Metropolitan Opera Club – the Master’s New York second home. Maybe main stage next. They were made Honorary Members!

Then there is his show Dial Medicine for Murder, comparing the grisly careers of notorious patient killers, Dr. Bodkin Adams and Harold Shipman.

Now that Harry has passed on the torch at ENO surely the cry will go up elsewhere, ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’

Wrung out after last year’s Ring Cycle Longborough Festival Opera is taking a sideways glance at the Wagner family after the old man’s death. Warring cats in a sack.

Wahnfried begins with the death of Richard Wagner and spans forty years of history. Think Succession! The Wagner family version.

Determination to construct the myth of the patriarch composer, the brutal infighting that flows from that, and with no flinching from their disturbing political affiliations, all make for a riveting tale.

This major new opera by Avner Dorman, with a libretto by acclaimed playwrights Lutz Hübner and Sarah Nemitz, will receive its UK premiere at Longborough in 2025.

The world premiere was presented alongside the Karlsruhe Ring in 2017 and was nominated for a prestigious International Opera Award in the Best New Opera category.

The Master insists I point out in the interests of complete disclosure he has a dog in this fight. He is Longborough’s American Ambassador. Distinctly pleased with himself.

Their film of Verdi’s La Traviata is complete. The Master tells me it is a beautifully crafted piece. Available on Sky Arts. We watched.

Susan Gaspar is Violetta, Thomas Elwin, Alfredo, and Roderick Williams is a compelling Germont, convincing Violetta she should sacrifice her love for his son – so his daughter’s snobby fiancé won’t give her the push.

Contrary to popular myth, dogs can watch TV and the singing direct to camera is a thing to behold. Not just a film of an opera. Different art form.

Neal Goren’s small opera company always has something original to say. Last year it was the premiere of a Nadia Boulanger opera, La Ville Morte, in Athens and New York! Ambitious, moi?

The master saw both of them!

In June look out for San Giovanni Battista by the exhumed composer Alessandro Stradella. First outing 1625. A take on the biblical Salome tale. Something to lose your head over.

An exciting, newly minted, Ring Cycle from the ever-ambitious Regents Opera. The small opera company that could. Two complete Ring Cycles from February 9th – March 2nd.

Carefully crafted orchestration will ring out in York Hall, Bethnal Green. Normally the province of boxing matches. I predict Wotan will be clobbered in Round 4. Not called Götterdämmerung for nothing.