So do we exchange jolly peasants for glowering apparatchiks? Hardly – this is as entertaining a version of Smetana’s opera as you could wish, but the celebration of Czech nationalism has extra edge ...

This new recording of Smetana's great comedy is arguably the finest achievement to date in Chandos's Opera in English series. Mackerras brings a lifetime's understanding of Czech music to bear on the ...

Coming from a rural backwater in a sparsely populated land boasting just one opera house, the Norwegian soprano Solveig Kringelborn is the archetypal small-town girl made good. Coming from a rural ...