★★★★★I smell a massive hit. Which is more than Kovalev, the ill-fated civil servant in Shostakovich’s 1930 opera, can do — because his nose has been accidentally sliced off by a barber and is pompously wandering the streets of St Petersburg. Now it has wandered into the Royal Opera’s repertory for the first time, and I don’t think I have ever heard a Covent Garden audience laugh so loudly or so often. For that, credit Barrie Kosky. Making his belated Royal Opera debut, the Australian director has found the stage vehicle of his dreams: an opera as surreal, manic, grotesque…

Source: The Times October 21, 2016 11:03 UTC