Festen

WHEN some of my less forgiving critical colleagues trashed his last opera, the composer Mark Anthony Turnage said he’d never write another. But he has. It plays at the Royal Opera House Feb 11-27. And it’s called Festen, after Thomas Vinterberg’s cult-status film about a family gathering that turns bad when the children accuse their father of historical abuse.

No laughing matter, it nonetheless has elements of grim humour that director Richard Jones will doubtless deliver in his deadpan way. Expect Turnage’s score to come with earthy streetwise glamour, powerfully played by a cast including Allan Clayton and Gerald Finley. But also expect to find it all deeply disturbing. rbo.org.uk

• Here’s a paradox. Stretched over four evenings, the mighty apparatus that is Wagner’s Ring Cycle is the biggest deal in all opera: a sprawling dungeons & dragons epic generally undertaken by major houses, and then only rarely. But this week it’s tackled by a fringe company, Regents Opera, with a cut-down 21-piece orchestra playing in the York Hall, Bethnal Green: a venue better known for boxing. And the likelihood of knockout performances is high, because Regents Opera has a track record for pulling off ambitious ventures like this – with unknown singers who turn out to have staggering talent.

The first cycle runs Feb 9, 11, 13 & 16, with a second later in the month. If nothing else, an event. regentsopera.com

• For a different kind of extra-terrestrial fantasy, a new work by James MacMillan gets its UK premiere from the BBC Singers on Feb 13. Called Ordo Virtutum, it sets a spiritual drama by the 12th-century mystic Hildegard of Bingen about Good and Evil fighting for possession of a human soul. Sounds like another knockout match at York Hall, though it actually takes place in the Barbican’s Milton Court. barbican.org.uk

• Also at the Barbican is a British blockbuster night, Feb 9, when Antonio Pappano conducts the LSO in Vaughan Williams’ heart-stirring Sea Symphony and Walton’s star-spangled Cello Concerto. That the symphony is based on American poems by Walt Whitman and the concerto basks in the Mediterranean magic of Walton’s home on Ischia only goes to show that British music has a breadth of vision beyond Little Englishness. And these are masterworks of visionary greatness. barbican.org.uk

• If you watched the last BBC Young Musician competition on TV, you’ll have seen an incredibly engaging 17-year-old harpist, Jamaal Kashim, who didn’t win but was in with a chance. He was someone you’d want to see again. And you can on Feb 9 when he plays one of the Sunday morning coffee concerts that now run in the Albert Hall’s Elgar Room. His programme includes Grandjany and other composers that only harpists know. And while I wouldn’t want to distract you from church, it’s worth thinking about. royalalberthall.com

• Talking of church, there’s a performance of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time at St Marylebone Parish Church, Feb 8: stmarylebone.org. And also on Feb 8, Hampstead Parish Church has its annual Sidwell Recital in tribute to the legendary musician who served as organist there for almost half a century. Singers Rebekah Nieber-Jones and Eoghan Desmond perform songs about setting suns and twilight. Take a torch. Tickets: fom.org.uk