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4 30 Jun 2020
‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’ »
26 Jun 2020
Eboracum Baroque is a flexible period instrument ensemble, comprising singers and instrumentalists, which was founded in York - as its name suggests, Eboracum being the name of the Roman fort on the site of present-day York - while artistic director Chris Parsons was at York University. »
30 Apr 2020
‘There could be no happier existence. Each morning he composed something beautiful and each evening he found the most enthusiastic admirers. We gathered in his room - he played and sang to us - we were enthusiastic and afterwards we went to the tavern. We hadn’t a penny but were blissfully happy.’ »
06 Nov 2019
When soprano Eleanor Dennis was asked - by Ashok Klouda, one of the founders and co-directors of the Highgate International Chamber Music Festival - to perform some of Beethoven’s Scottish Songs Op.108 at this year’s Festival, as she leafed through the score to make her selection the first thing that struck her was the beauty of the poetry. »
13 Oct 2019
“At the start, one knows ‘bits’ of it,” says tenor Mark Padmore, somewhat wryly, when I meet him at the Stage Door of the Royal Opera House where the tenor has just begun rehearsals for David McVicar’s new production of Death in Venice, which in November will return Britten’s opera to the ROH stage for the first time since 1992. »
27 Sep 2019
“Trust me, I’m telling you stories …” »
12 Sep 2019
When British opera director Nina Brazier tries to telephone me from Frankfurt, where she is in the middle of rehearsals for a revival of Florentine Klepper’s 2015 production of Martinů’s Julietta, she finds herself - to my embarrassment - ‘blocked’ by my telephone preference settings. The technical hitch is soon solved; but doors, in the UK and Europe, are certainly very much wide open for Nina, who has been described by The Observer as ‘one of Britain’s leading young directors of opera’. »
21 Jul 2019
“We need to stop talking about ‘diversity’ and think instead about ‘inclusivity’,” says Bill Bankes-Jones, when we meet to talk about the forthcoming twelfth Tête à Tête Opera Festival which runs from 24th July to 10th August. »
05 Jul 2019
The young Hong Kong-born British composer Dani Howard is having quite a busy year. »
24 Jun 2019
For Peter Sellars, Mozart’s Idomeneo is a ‘visionary’ work, a utopian opera centred on a classic struggle between a father and a son written by an angry 25-year-old composer who wanted to show the musical establishment what a new generation could do. »
13 Jun 2019
“Physiognomy, psychology and technique.” These are the three things that determine the way a singer’s sound is produced, so Ken Querns-Langley explains when we meet in the genteel surroundings of the National Liberal Club, where the training programmes, open masterclasses and performances which will form part the third London Bel Canto Festival will be held from 5th-24th August. »
17 May 2019
“Sop. Page, attendant on the King.” So, reads a typical character description of the loyal page Oscar, whose actions, in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, unintentionally lead to his monarch’s death. He reveals the costume that King Gustavo is wearing at the masked ball, thus enabling the monarch’s secretary, Anckarstroem, to shoot him. The dying King falls into the faithful Oscar’s arms. »
17 May 2019
A mournful Princess forced by her father into an arranged marriage. A Prince who laments that no-one loves him for himself, and so exchanges places with his aide-de-camp. A melancholy dreamer who dons a deceased jester’s motley and finds himself imprisoned for impertinence. »
15 May 2019
‘Aloneness’ does not immediately seem a likely or fruitful subject for an opera. But, loneliness and isolation - an individual’s inner sphere, which no other human can truly know or enter - are at the core of Yasushi Inoue’s creative expression. »
09 May 2019
What links Wagner’s Das Rheingold, Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Cavalli’s La Calisto? It sounds like the sort of question Paul Gambaccini might pose to contestants on BBC Radio 4’s music quiz, Counterpoint. »
26 Feb 2019
Though she won praise from the literary greats of her day, including Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound and Siegfried Sassoon, the Victorian poet Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was little-known among the contemporary reading public. When she visited the Poetry Bookshop of Harold Monro, the publisher of her first and only collection, The Farmer’s Bride (1916), she was asked, “Are you Charlotte Mew?” Her reply was characteristically diffident and self-deprecatory: “I’m sorry to say I am.” »
22 Feb 2019
“It lives!” So cries Victor Frankenstein in Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption: or the Fate of Frankenstein on beholding the animation of his creature for the first time. Peake might equally have been describing the novel upon which he had based his 1823 play which, staged at the English Opera House, had such a successful first run that it gave rise to fourteen further adaptations of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novella in the following three years. »
27 Nov 2018
It sounds like a question from a BBC Radio 4 quiz show: what links Handel’s cantata for solo contralto, La Lucrezia, Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, and the post-punk band Joy Division? »
10 Sep 2018
The first two instalments of the Academy of Ancient Music’s ‘Purcell trilogy’ at the Barbican Hall have posed plentiful questions - creative, cultural and political. »
25 Jul 2018
In the opera house and on the concert platform, we are accustomed to ‘women being men’, as it were. From heroic knights to adolescent youths, women don the armour and trousers, and no-one bats an eyelid. »
18 Jun 2018
Opera directors are used to thinking their way out of theatrical, dramaturgical and musico-dramatic conundrums, but one of the more unusual challenges must be how to stage the spectacle of a young princess’s naked horseback-ride through the streets of a city. »
24 May 2018
Nancy Carroll and Roger Allam play Audrey Mildmay and John Christie in David Hare’s play The Moderate Soprano which is currently at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London. »
22 May 2018
Revolution, repetition, rhetoric. On my way to meet countertenor Iestyn Davies, I ponder if these are the elements that might form connecting threads between the music of Henry Purcell and Michael Nyman, whose works will be brought together later this month when Davies joins the viol consort Fretwork for a thought-provoking recital at Milton Court Concert Hall. »
15 May 2018
‘On August 3, 1941, the day that Capriccio was finished, 682 Jews were killed in Chernovtsy, Romania; 1,500 in Jelgava, Latvia; and several hundred in Stanisławów, Ukraine. On October 28, 1942, the day of the opera’s premiere in Munich, the first convoy of Jews from Theresienstadt arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and 90 percent of them went to the gas chamber.’ »
21 Mar 2018
Lisette Oropesa sings Eurydice in Los Angeles Opera’s French version of Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice that can currently be seen at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. »
26 Feb 2018
Bampton Classical Opera’s 25th anniversary season opens with a
concert on 7th March at St John’s Smith Square to celebrate the
legendary soprano Nancy Storace.
»
20 Jan 2018
Following their marriage, on 12th September 1840, Robert and Clara Schumann made their home in a first-floor apartment on the piano nobile of a classical-style residence now known as the Schumann House, on Inselstraße, just a short walk from the centre of Leipzig. »
15 Oct 2017
As I approach St Cyprian’s Church in Marylebone, musical sounds which are at once strange and sensuous surf the air. Inside I find seventy or so instrumentalists and singers nestled somewhat crowdedly between the pillars of the nave, rehearsing George Benjamin’s much praised 2012 opera, Written on Skin. »
02 Oct 2017
Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier was premiered at the Dresden Semperoper on 26th January 1911. Almost fifteen years to the day, on 10th January 1926, the theatre hosted another Rosenkavalier ‘premiere’, with the screening of a silent film version of the opera, directed by Robert Wiene - best known for his expressionistic masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. The two-act scenario had been devised by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the screening was accompanied by a symphony orchestra which Strauss himself conducted. »
14 Sep 2017
I have to confess, somewhat sheepishly, at the start of my conversation with Mark Padmore, that I had not previously been aware of the annual music festival held in the small Cotswolds town of Tetbury, which was founded in 2002 and to which Padmore will return later this month to perform a recital of lieder by Schubert and Schumann with pianist Till Fellner. »
03 Jul 2017
There can hardly be a dry eye in the house, at the ‘Theatre in the Woods’ at West Horsley Place - Grange Park Opera’s new home - when, in Act 3 of Janáček's first mature opera, Natalya Romaniw’s Jenůfa realises that the tiny child whose frozen body has been discovered under the ice is her own dead son. »
22 May 2017
It’s six or so years ago since soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn appeared as an exciting and highly acclaimed new voice on the UK operatic stage, with critics praising her ‘ravishing account’ (The Stage) of Mozart’s Countess in Investec Opera Holland Park’s 2011 Le nozze di Figaro in which ‘Porgi, amor’ was a ‘highlight of the evening’. »
21 May 2017
One year ago, tens of millions of Britons voted for isolation rather than for cooperation, but Douglas (Dougie) Boyd, Artistic Director of Garsington Opera, is an energetic one-man counterforce with a dynamic conviction that art and culture are strengthened by participation and collaboration; values which, alongside excellence and a spirit of adventure, have seen Garsington Opera acquire increasing renown and esteem on the international stage during his tenure, since 2012. »
22 Apr 2017
Riccardo Frizza is a young Italian conductor whose performances in Europe and the United States are getting rave reviews. He tells us of his love for the operas of Verdi, Bellini, and particularly Donizetti. »
24 Oct 2016
Raphaela Papadakis seems to like ‘playing with fire’. After her acclaimed performance as the put-upon maid, Anna, in Independent Opera’s production of Šimon Voseček’s Beidermann and the Arsonists at Sadler’s Wells last year, she is currently rehearsing for the premiere this week of And London Burned, a new opera by Matt Rogers which has been commissioned by Temple Music Foundation to commemorate the 350th anniversary of The Great Fire of London. »
27 Sep 2016
In October 2014, the Oxford Lieder Festival - under its imaginative and intrepid founder, Sholto Kynoch - fulfilled an incredibly ambitious goal: to perform Schubert’s entire corpus of songs - more than 600 - and, for three marvellous weeks, to bring Vienna to Oxford. ‘The Schubert Project’ was a magnificent celebration of the life and music of Franz Schubert: at its core lay the first complete performance of Schubert’s songs - including variants and alternative versions - in the UK. »
23 Jun 2016
Lyric soprano Elizabeth Caballero’s signature role is Violetta in La traviata, which she portrays with a compelling interpretation, focused sound, and elegant coloratura that floats through the opera house as naturally as waves on the ocean. »
16 Jun 2016
Maria Nockin interviews baritone Brian Mulligan. »
21 May 2016
I arrive at the Jerwood Space, where rehearsals are underway for Garsington
Opera’s forthcoming production of Idomeneo, to find that the
afternoon rehearsal has finished a little early. »
29 Apr 2016
With its merry-go-round exchange of deluded and bewitched lovers, an orphan-turned-princess, a usurped prince, a jewel and a flower with magical properties, a march to the scaffold and a meddling ‘mistress-of-ceremonies’ who encourages the young lovers to disguise and deceive, William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Rose and the Ring has all the ingredients of an opera buffa. »
11 Jan 2016
Kathleen Kelly is an internationally renowned pianist, coach, conductor, and master teacher. She was the first woman and first American named Director of Musical Studies at the Vienna State Opera. »
20 Oct 2015
Atsuto Sawakami is a slightly built man in his late sixties with impeccable, gentlemanly manners. He communicates a certain restless energy and his piercingly bright eyes reveal an undimmed appetite for life. »
15 Oct 2015
‘Lieder v. Opera’? At first glance it might seem to be a pointless or nonsensical question. »
11 Oct 2015
Last year's Oxford Lieder Festival made something of a splash when it encompassed all of Schubert's songs, performed in the space of three weeks. This year's festival, the 14th, which runs from 16 to 31 October 2015 has a rather different, yet still eye-catching theme; Singing Words: Poets and their Songs. »
17 Sep 2015
For a company founded in 2013, Odyssey Opera has an astounding track record. To take on Korngold’s Die tote Stadt is ambitious enough, but to do so within only a year of the company’s founding seems almost single-minded. »
08 Sep 2015
American tenor René Barbera is fast making a name for himself as one of the
top bel canto singers in opera houses around the world. »
31 Jul 2015
I’m interviewing Stefano Mastrangelo in the immediate aftermath of his conducting La Traviata for the Chofu City Opera in Tokyo on 22 November 2014; he conveys an air at once of tiredness and exhilaration. »
30 Jun 2015
Sara Gartland is an emerging singer who brings an enormous talent and a delightful personality to the opera stage. Having sung lighter soprano roles such as Juliette in Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette and Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata, Gartland is now taking on the title role in Leoš Janáček’s dramatic opera Jenůfa. »
25 Jun 2015
American composer Jennifer Higdon has won many awards for her imaginative music. Her percussion concerto received the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. »
02 Jun 2015
Bratislava in Slovakia might seem an unlikely place to come across the opera
I gioielli della Madonna (The Jewels of the Madonna) a 1911 rarity
written by the Italian/German Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, a composer best known for
his one-act opera Il segreto di Susanna ( Susanna’s Secret)
and his comedies based on Goldoni. »
22 May 2015
Last year’s Strauss anniversary year — 150 years since his birth —
offered, at least in the United Kingdom, a typical number of opportunities and
frustrations. »
22 Mar 2015
Julia Noulin-Mérat is the principal designer for the Noulin-Merat Studio, an intrepid New York City production design firm that works in theater, film, and television, but emphasizes opera and immersive site-specific theatre. »
04 Feb 2015
Anita Rachvelishvili recently performed the title role in Carmen broadcast by The Metropolitan Opera Live in HD. Here she drops by for a little chat with our Maria Nockin. »
27 Aug 2014
"Although there are now more people on this planet than there have ever been before, there are fewer dramatic voices. Something is wrong with that equation. I thought there needs to be some sort of helping hand so that dramatic voices don’t fall through the cracks in the system as they advance through their various stages of development." »
13 Jun 2014
Anna Prohaska sings Sister Constance in Poulenc’s Dialogues des
Carmélites at the Royal Opera House. In the same month, she’s also in
London to sing a recital with Eric Schneider at the Wigmore Hall, and to sing
Henze with Sir Simon Rattle at the Barbican Hall. »
03 Jun 2014
Garsington Opera celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. »
13 Mar 2014
I met with the embattled artistic director of the Opéra et Orchestre National de Montepellier not to talk about his battles. I simply wanted to know the man who had cast and staged a truly extraordinary Mozart/DaPonte trilogy. »
12 Mar 2014
Maria Nockin interviews tenor Saimir Pirgu. »
13 Jan 2014
Matthew Polenzani reprises the role of the Chevalier des Grieux in Jules Massenet’s Manon at the Royal Opera House. “I love coming back to London”, he says, “It’s a very good house and they take care of you as a singer. And the level of music making is unbelievably high”. »
07 Nov 2013
The Flying Dutchman is a transitional piece because Wagner was only beginning to establish his style. He took some aspects from Carl Maria von Weber and others from Italian composers like Vincenzo Bellini. »
30 Aug 2013
On a personal level, I feel that Dolores is almost like Emmeline grown up. Their circumstances are not exactly parallel, but they are both women at very different points in their lives whose stories involve dilemmas with life-changing outcomes. »
30 Aug 2013
With the help of Andrew Welch, a London theatrical producer who had adapted several of King’s works for the stage, including this one, I got the rights to both Dolores Claiborne and Misery. »
19 Aug 2013
On September 18, 2013, San Francisco Opera will present the world premiere of Tobias Picker’s opera, Dolores Claiborne, which has a libretto by J. D. McClatchy based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name. »
13 Jul 2013
Ermonela Jaho caused a sensation at Covent Garden in London five years ago, when she took over Violetta at short notice from Anna Netrebko. »
04 Jun 2013
Garsington Opera at Wormsley is producing the British premiere of Giacomo Rossini´s Maometto Secondo. Garsington Opera is well-known for its role in reviving Rossini rarities in Britain. Since 1994, there have been 14 productions of 12 Rossini operas, and David Parry has
conducted eleven since 2002. He´s very enthusiastic about Maometto Secondo.
»
17 May 2013
Rossini’s La donna del Lago at the Royal Opera House boasts a superstar cast. Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez are perhaps the best in these roles in the business at this time. Yet the conductor Michele Mariotti is also hot news. »
01 May 2013
It would seem a logical step for the mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey to take on
the role of the Composer in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. »
29 Apr 2013
“Aim for excellence”, says Douglas Boyd, new Artistic Director of Garsington Opera at Wormsley, “and the audience will follow you”. »
23 Apr 2013
When I spoke with Zandra Rhodes, she was in her large San Diego workspace, which she described as having walls decorated with her own huge black and white drawings. »
05 Mar 2013
Palm Beach audiences are famous for their glamour, but in recent years a special star has sparkled amid the jewels, sequins, feathers and furs (whatever the weather). »
03 Mar 2013
When the soprano Jessica Pratt first arrived in Italy, she had yet to learn the language or sing in a staged opera. »
10 Nov 2012
When tenor Michael Spyres takes the stage at Carnegie Hall on December 5th, he will be in heady company. »
15 Oct 2012
One of the most noteworthy and controversial productions in recent memory
arrived in Belgium with hurricane force as Director Terry Gilliam’s inaugural
opera, an inspired interpretation of Hector Berlioz’s Le Damnation de
Faust, blasted into Ghent, followed by a run in Antwerp. »
09 Oct 2012
Florian Boesch is singing Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin at the Oxford Lieder Festival on Sunday 14th October. This won’t be routine. Radically challenging conventional interpretation, Boesch says “I don’t believe it ends in suicide” »
08 Aug 2012
Three quarters of the way through this discussion, a question that inhabits the mind of anyone putting any thought to the subject — but no one dare ask — was rhetoricised, “what is opera?” »
30 Jul 2012
The Glyndebourne Festival highlight this year could be the Ravel double bill - L’heure espagnole and L'enfant et les sortilèges. Laurent Pelly directs. Anyone who saw his brilliant Humperdinck Hansel und Gretel at Glyndebourne in 2008 will know what to expect - a staging of great imagination and verve, true to the spirit of the composer. »
26 May 2012
Director David Freeman tells why this is an event worth experiencing in the Olympic year. »
31 Mar 2012
Irish composer Gerald Barry’s opera The Importance of Being Earnest
premieres at the Barbican, London on April 26th. It is a joint commission between the Barbican and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
»
26 Feb 2012
New Orleans native Bryan Hymel is singing the role of The Prince in Antonin Dvořák's Rusalka at the Royal Opera House, London. »
15 Feb 2012
Carmela Remigio is a Mozart specialist, having created Donna Elvira, Donna Anna, The Countess in Le nozze di Figaro, Susana, Ilia, Ellettra, Vitellia, Pamina and Fiordigli. She speaks to Mark Berry about her latest Donna Anna at the Royal Opera House. »
25 Jan 2012
Lise Lindstrom, who made a notable splash in the opera world (debuts at La Scala and at the Met) with her portrayals of Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot, has recently undertaken the still more demanding role of Salome. »
30 Dec 2011
I spoke with Vivica Genaux in December 2011, when she stopped in New York at
the end of one of her concert tours. »
27 Nov 2011
Piotr Beczala, the Polish lyric tenor, stars in the current La Traviata at the Royal Opera House, London. »
12 Jul 2011
In Gounod’s Faust at the Royal Opera House in October 2011,
Zhengzhong Zhou is alternating with Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the part of
Valentin. Alternating, not covering or substituting. Since Zhou is very young,
it’s quite a challenge. »
30 Jun 2011
Luca Pisaroni is one of one the more exciting young bass-baritones of his
generation. In July 2011, he sings Argante in the first ever Handel Rinaldo at
the Glyndebourne Festival. »
27 Jun 2011
Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser’s Madama Butterfly is such a classic that it is being filmed for the second time at the Royal Opera House, London. »
22 Jun 2011
Will Crutchfield made his name as a writer and musicologist in the mid-1980s, becoming the youngest music critic in the history of The New York Times. »
17 Jun 2011
Divas make headlines, but character singers are fundamental to the British opera tradition. “Character singing,” says Jeremy White, one of the stalwarts of the Royal Opera House, “is much more than just voice.” »
16 Jun 2011
Since her first significant and highly acclaimed debut as a guest artist with the Netherlands Opera in 1992, in the taxing role of the Nurse in Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, American mezzo-soprano Jane Henschel has triumphed in opera houses across the world, marvelling international audiences with her musical versatility, vocal strength and striking stage presence. »
14 Jun 2011
John Fulljames has been appointed Associate Director for Opera at the Royal Opera House. »
22 May 2011
Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska certainly knows how to make the most
of every opportunity. »
10 Apr 2011
“A tale of corruption, passion and poisoning”, as the Royal Opera House, London, describes its first-ever production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride, with Paata Burchuladze, highly experienced in this repertoire. »
20 Feb 2011
For geography buffs the Rappahannock is a river that flows from Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to Chesapeake Bay. »
01 Feb 2011
In an episode of the series West Wing, political strategist Josh Lyman (played by Bradley Whitford) visits his friend and speech writer Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) in New York City before heading to New Hampshire for a promising candidate’s campaign speech. »
31 Jan 2011
Elizabeth Futral has established herself as one of the major coloratura sopranos in the world today. With her stunning vocalism and vast dramatic range, she has embraced a diverse repertoire that includes Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, Glass, and Previn. »
31 Jan 2011
British soprano, Elisabeth Meister, is a rare combination of pragmatism, serious intent, personal warmth and infectious energy. »
31 Dec 2010
Composer and pianist Andrea Clearfield is a fundamental presence on the
contemporary music scene in Philadelphia, with a long collaboration with the
Relâche Ensemble to her credit, as well as a monthly salon in her home (with
close to 25 years of concerts) that brings together artists from various
disciplines, not only music. »
06 Dec 2010
Rodney Waschka is a professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where his multifarious activities are fundamental to the presence of contemporary music in the state. »
18 Nov 2010
Swedish composer Stellan Sagvik is a protean figure with a large and diverse body of work ranging from works for solo flute (most recently written for his wife, Kinga Práda), to chamber music — five string quartets, with another on the way, and symphonies, operas and choral music. »
07 Nov 2010
A completely new production of Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur is coming to the Royal Opera House, London. »
03 Nov 2010
Composer Marcela Pavia was born and raised in Rosario, Argentina, and comes from a family of Italian immigrants. »
24 Sep 2010
Composer Pierre Jalbert (b.1967), of French Canadian ancestry, was born and raised in northern New England, and studied composition at Oberlin Conservatory and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked with George Crumb. »
13 Sep 2010
This season Santa Fe Opera offered new productions that ranged from standard
repertoire (Madame Butterfly and The Magic Flute) to a world
premiere (Lewis Spratlan’s Life is a Dream) with The Tales
of Hoffmann and Albert Herring falling somewhere amidst. »
13 Sep 2010
Bruce Adolphe, born and raised in the New York area, a student of
composition at Juilliard in the sixties and seventies, has an impressive body
of work commissioned by artists known on every continent, and was chosen by the
Music Library Association to write a piece for brass (Triskelion)
marking the sixtieth anniversary of the Association, premiered by the American
Brass Quintet at the national meeting in Indianapolis in February, 1991. »
12 Sep 2010
As one of the most sought after composers of the young generation, Mohammed
Fairouz has many commissions and a substantial body of work, and maintains a
busy performance schedule. »
09 Sep 2010
Jacques Imbrailo sings Dr Malatesta in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale at the Royal Opera House, London »
24 Aug 2010
Robert Baksa is a name that is well-known to lovers of contemporary chamber music, with a hundred chamber works to his credit. »
07 Jul 2010
“You want to frame the voice in such a way that it shines.”— Daniel Catán »
01 Jul 2010
Baritone Austin Kness, an Adler Fellow at San Francisco Opera recently spoke with Opera Today critic Michael Milenski. »
28 Jun 2010
Jay Reise is one of the senior musical figures in Philadelphia, serving on
the composition faculty of the University of Pennsylvania since 1980. »
19 Jun 2010
On 7 June 2010, I spoke with Christine Brewer who was enjoying a relatively
free week at her home near St. Louis, Missouri, after long months of air travel
between concerts, recitals and operatic performances. »
17 Jun 2010
Opera stars are made as well as born. The Royal Opera House Jette Parker Young Artists Programme shapes the stars of the future. »
07 Jun 2010
‘Focussed and pure of tone’, ‘beautifully steady’,
‘pure clarity and note perfection’ — just some of the
accolades bestowed on the Lithuanian mezzo soprano Jurgita Adamonytė for
her recent performances of Mozart. »
04 Jun 2010
Aris Argiris makes his debut at Covent Garden as Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen. But this is unusually high-profile because it's a first, being filmed in 3D. »
03 Jun 2010
Olja Jelaska (b. 1967) is an important figure in the younger generation of
composers from Croatia. »
01 Jun 2010
Juan Trigos, composer and conductor, was born and raised in Mexico City,
where his father, also Juan Trigos, is a noted playwright and novelist. »
18 May 2010
Composer Robert Maggio is professor of composition at West Chester
University (in suburban Philadelphia). »
17 May 2010
According to her web site, Elena Ruehr has been called a “composer to
watch” by Opera News, and her music has been described as
“stunning...beautifully lighted by [a] canny instinct for knowing when
and how to vary key, timbre, and harmony” by The Boston Globe. »
22 Apr 2010
Composer Stephen Jaffe is the Mary and James H. Semans Professor of Music
Composition at Duke University. We spoke in his office there in Durham NC on
June 25, 2007. »
22 Apr 2010
Micaela Carosi, the Verdi specialist, has created Aida many times, so she’s closely attuned to the role. The new production, at the Royal Opera House, London, though, is different. “It’s like singing Aida for the first time”, she says, her eyes sparkling. »
20 Apr 2010
Osmo Tapio Räihälä is a Finnish composer of contemporary music, and was the founder of Uusinta, a collaborative group of composers and musicians. »
10 Apr 2010
Composer Lance Hulme studied composition at the University of Minnesota,
Yale University, and the Eastman School of Music, and returned to the United
States recently, where he lives presently in Greensboro, North Carolina, after
two decades in Mitteleuropa, where he founded and directed the contemporary
music ensemble Ensemble Surprise. »
10 Apr 2010
Anna Weesner is an American composer who grew up in rocky New Hampshire, and
now teaches in historic Philadelphia. »
10 Apr 2010
Composer and pianist Timothy Andres is in his mid-twenties, with an impressive catalog of works to his credit, many of which can be heard at his website. »
03 Mar 2010
Composer Sophia Serghi is presently professor of music at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where she has taught since 1998, with two years away in 2000-2002. »
10 Feb 2010
Composer Gabriela Ortiz studied composition in Mexico City with Mario
Lavista at the National Conservatory of Music, at the Guildhall School with
Robert Saxton, and at the University of London with Simon Emmerson. »
25 Jan 2010
Kerry Andrew is a young British composer who seems to have her finger in an astounding number of pies, from modern sacred choral music to alt-folk, and including vocal chamber ensemble music and jazz. We talked via Skype on Jan. 12, 2010. »
18 Jan 2010
The thing you need in order to start an arts organization, even more than a
great deal of money, is a whirlwind – an individual with unstoppable
energy who can put it all together and keep it working through thin times and
thick. »
08 Jan 2010
American violinist Hilary Hahn has entered her fourth decade, having turned
thirty last year, and for her eleventh disc she takes on a collaborative role,
as obbligatist in a program of Bach cantata arias with soprano Christine
Schäfer and baritone Matthias Goerne, accompanied by the Münchener
Kammerorchester under the direction of Alexander Liebreich. »
07 Jan 2010
Composer Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon is presently on the faculty of the Eastman
School of Music in Rochester, New York. He grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico,
where he and colleague Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez played in a rock and roll band
together. »
25 Dec 2009
Composer William Price was born in Missouri (1971) and raised in Alabama, where he is presently professor of music theory at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. »
17 Dec 2009
John Fitz Rogers is presently an associate professor of composition at the University of South Carolina School of Music. »
26 Oct 2009
An Interview with Ileana Perez-VelazquezBy Tom Moore
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26 Jan 2009
Erich Korngold’s Die tote Stadt comes to the Royal Opera House in January 2009. It’s the first time this production has been seen in London : it is the famed Willy Decker production from Salzburg in 2004 which did so much to restore Korngold’s status.
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03 Oct 2008
A virtuoso saxophonist, performing internationally, Mark Engebretson is also a composer whose recent works often take place at the interface between the live performer and the computer. »
03 Oct 2008
Composer Alejandro Rutty is newly-arrived in North Carolina, where he teaches at UNC Greensboro. »
17 Feb 2008
“Quand je vous aimerais? Ma fois, je ne sais pas?” are Carmen’s first words of seduction. »
13 Jan 2008
Oct. 25, 2007, Sala Cecilia MeirelesI met the young gaucho composer Dimitri Cervo at the 2003 Bienal of Contemporary Music, where his works for solo flute and strings, Pattapiana [named for Pattapio Silva, a great Brazilian flutist who died tragically
young at the beginning of the last century] made quite an impression. »
26 Dec 2007
Composer Frederick Carrilho was born in 1971 in the state of Sao Paulo, and has studied guitar and composition, most recently at UNICAMP in Campinas. His music has been heard at the recent biennial festivals of contemporary music in Rio, with the Profusão V – Toccata making a strong impression at the Bienal of 2007. We spoke in Portuguese. »
28 Nov 2007
October 23, 2007, Sala Cecilia Meireles, Rio de Janeiro »
19 Nov 2007
Oct. 25, 2007, Rio de Janeiro. »
11 Nov 2007
José Orlando Alves is a young composer, originally from Minas Gerais, but who spent many years in Rio de Janeiro, where he has been active for a decade with the composers’ collaborative, Preludio XXI. »
28 Aug 2007
Uncut with Canada’s Mistress of the trouser-role: the multifaceted Kimberly Barber. »
