Caroline Levine Davids Secret Soccer Goals

Opium, the highly anticipated follow-up to Secret Sky's eponymous debut. Featuring the evocative vocals of Caroline Lavelle and the masterful guitar work of Brian Hughes, Secret Sky weaves together a tapestry of Pop and World music with exotic textures of the Middle Eastern Oud, Puerto Rican Cuatro, and the hypnotic Greek Lyra played by a contemporary master of the Lyra, Sokratis Sinopoulos. Opium takes the listener on a remarkable musical journey accompanied by an Allstar cast of musicians.

This time-honoured production of Verdi's final opera, one that has seen all the greatest Falstaffs of the last four decades hold court at its convincingly shabby Garter Inn and upset the decent folk of its lovingly recreated Tudor Windsor, marked the first appearance at the Met of producer and designer Franco Zeffirelli in March 1964. The Anglophile Zeffirelli had by then made his Shakespearean reputation with a revelatory Romeo and Juliet in London - his films of this play and of The Taming of the Shrew were shortly to follow - as well as with a similar production of Falstaff at Covent Garden, and the attention to visual and psychological detail displayed in his Met Falstaff won it high praise: “a milestone in the history of operatic production in this city" was the judgement of the New York Herald Tribune.