Rlpo

Grade: A It’s a cliché that the best Spanish music was written by Frenchmen but it’s mostly true nonetheless, and here to prove the point is Domingo Hindoyan and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Debussy’s Iberia and Ravel’s Rapsodie Espagnole form the balmy, orange-scented heart of this Franco-Spanish album, featuring not a single note by an actual Spaniard. It’s a beaker full of the warm south; summer holiday music for these bleak, damp days. Four Spanish-themed French miniatures fill out the programme, including Ravel’s spicy orchestration of Alborada del gracioso. I’ll be honest, though, they had me at Chabrier’s Espana, that shameless little burst of sunshine from a composer who

Say what you like about that Duke of Mantua, but he’s basically an OK sort of bloke. A bit of an arse, sure; the kind of TOWIE-adjacent, skinny jean-wearing reality star who’d commission photographic portraits of himself and recruit an entourage of hipsters and B-boy wannabes. But really, his worst crimes are against taste. His neon-lit crib might be hung with hideous religious art, but his parties are relatively free of the nudity, quaffing and non-consensual dry-humping that tends to characterise Act One of Verdi’s Rigoletto. In Femi Elufowoju Jr’s new staging for Opera North, the Duke lays on a hog roast for his posse but doesn’t forget to order