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New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Barry Millington's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Christof Loy, Andrew Sinclair (revival director).
Cast: The Royal Opera, Herbert Murauer (des), Mark Elder (cond), Deborah Voigt (Primadonna/Ariadne), Kristine Jepson (Composer), Thomas Allen (Music Master), Alan Oke (Dancing Master), Jacques Imbrailo (Wigmaker), Dean Robinson (Lackey), Robert D Smith (Tenor/Bacchus), Richard Margison (Tenor/Bacchus, Jun 21, 25), Gillian Keith (Zerbinetta), Markus Werba (Harlequin), Ji-Min Park (Scaramuccio), Jeremy White (Truffaldino), Haoyin Xue (Brighella), Anita Watson (Naiad), Sarah Castle (Dryad), Anna Leese (Echo), Christopher Quest (The Major Domo)
Description: Andrew Sinclair directs Christof Loy's popular production of Richard Strauss's reworking of the Greek myth of Ariadne and Bacchus, with Deborah Voigt as Ariadne and Robert D Smith as Bacchus (not Jun 21, 25). Conducted by Mark Elder and sung in German with English surtitles.
Trains: Tube: Covent Garden 
Phone: 0207304 4000
Website: www.roh.org.uk
Email: onlinebooking@roh.org.uk
Extra info: Air Conditioning, Food
A slimmed-down Deborah Voigt was triumphant in her new role as Ariadne
Alluring: Gillian Keith as Zerbinetta
The infamous black cocktail dress has returned to Covent Garden, now inhabited, against all expectations, by Deborah Voigt herself.
You may recall the saga of Ms Voigt, one of America's more substantial sopranos, being sacked when this Ariadne was new in 2002 - at the time she was several sizes too large for the dress.
Having garnered sympathy from those, not least in her native country, for whom dramatic verisimilitude has a lower priority than sheer vocal beauty, Voigt was gracious enough to accept Covent Garden's offer to return, once she had lost enough weight, with the help of gastric bypass surgery, to fit the production - and that dress.
Voigt has a gleaming tone with a touch of steel, ideal for Straussian roles such as Ariadne. Her diction is crystal-clear and her animated line projects the words with genuine feeling for their significance. There's a nice irony in that the work is in part about the pressures to which great art is subjected.
Christof Loy's production, sharply revived by Andrew Sinclair, brings out the undesirability of seigneurial diktat, but also plays with the tricky issue of sexual allure in both art and life. Gillian Keith's Zerbinetta spends much of the Prologue wiggling her bottom in tight jeans, often with only a bra above, the better to display her assets.
The production thus now adds its own witty critique to the cocktail dress incident but Keith, making her mainstage début, is in vocal terms, too, an impressively agile coloratura soprano, secure in the stratosphere. Robert Dean Smith is in good form with an heroic Bacchus, while Kristine Jepson is an outstanding Composer, evoking the inspirational quality of the creative artist in streams of Straussian eloquence.
There's strong support from members of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme and others in the comprimario roles. The whole thing is tied together with the mastery and sensitivity we have come to expect from the newly knighted
One could quibble over minor details and the singers new to the production will doubtless bring even more to it in due course. But this was a life-enhancing evening and a triumph for both Voigt and the Royal Opera. The house has reasserted its conviction that theatrical values in opera are no less important than musical ones. Deborah
Voigt has given dramatic and visible credence to that principle.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
