Opera, taken seriously and explained plainly

Sounds and Fury is an independent publication about opera — the works and what actually happens in them, the voice types and what they cost a singer, how a production is built and lit, the buildings and their acoustics, and the recordings worth knowing.

It is written for someone who is curious and under-served by both the marketing and the snobbery. We assume no prior knowledge and no patience for reverence. Italian, German and French terms appear where they are the right words, and are explained in English the first time they turn up.

What we do not do

We are not an opera house, a festival, a company or a ticket agent. We publish no season, no casting, no prices and no dates. Nothing here expires, which is deliberate: a piece about why the Bayreuth pit is covered is as true next year as it is today.

We do not profile living singers, conductors or directors. Performers are named where they made the performance under discussion and nowhere else, and we invent no quotations.

On the difficult material

A great deal of the core repertoire turns on violence and coercion. We describe those plots plainly, in the ordinary words, without relish and without dressing them as romance.

How it is paid for

By the firms listed on the homepage. None of them commissions a piece, sees one early, or has any say in what appears here.