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WATCH: Stephen Fry/Alan Davies at Royal Opera House's Deloitte Ignite Verdi/Wagner Festival

What does great art do to our bodies? In an exciting world first, The Science of Opera with Stephen Fry and Alan Davies saw a team of medical scientists from UCL discovering what happens inside us when we go to the opera. Opera lover Stephen Fry took his friend, Royal Opera virgin and QI panellist Alan Davies, to the Royal Opera House. They were hooked up with the latest medical gadgetry to record the physical effects on their bodies of watching Verdi's political masterpiece Simon Boccanegra.The Science of Opera promises some landmark medical discoveries as well as answering some key questions; was Alan Davies won over by opera? Did Stephen Fry get shivers down the spine during the show? Did either of them fall asleep? And what could opera do to you?
By Logan K. Young

  • José Carreras, 66, Returning to Opera in Christian Kolonovits' 'El Juez' at Bilbao

    He was never exactly in the vanguard of new writing, but the news of José Carreras' return to opera with a new work--'El Juez' by Christian Kolonovits, after a story by Angelika Messner--is doubly surprising. Most surprising, perhaps, because most of us thought we'd seen the Spaniard's last complete role on an operatic stage. At 66, alas, Italianate tenors are usually only giving recitals and concerts of arias. That's the role Carreras looked to have assumed, and this will be his first complete opera since Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's 'Sly' in 2002.
    By James Inverne

  • Why You Should've Seen Henrik Ibsen's 'An Enemy of the People' at BAM's Next Wave Fest

    The ghost of Henrik Ibsen's head flaps its giant sideburn wings as it glides through the exposed stone walls of the BAM Harvey Theater, where it settles on a rail in the house gallery. Stoically observing the latest production of his "iconoclast-erpiece," An Enemy of the People, his hawk-like eyes reveal nothing behind their wired frames.
    By B. Samuels
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