In Wordsworth’s great ode Intimations of Immortality there is an imaginative reference to “the clouds that gather round the ...

2) With its publicity, did your success properly launch your career? Absolutely. I had quite a different path from many of my colleagues—I didn’t go down the route of doing an opera course at college ...

of ‘the Yellow Label’ have been central to the recording of Wagner’s ...

The label’s name and legendary yellow logo synonymous for many music lovers ...

Today Bluebeard is considered one of BartÛk’s finest scores, fraught with Gothic darkness and abundant in orchestral riches and impressions. It is essentially a ‘static’ work and thus works well in ...

much of it fruitful, some of it perhaps less so, between Brecht and Weill, came ...

particular feeling that opera can engender in listeners.

As I wrote in my review of the production, ‘her terrible bereavement, at first quietly accepted, resurges with terrifying force when … she recognises the tiny red cap that she knitted for him. Never ...

‘beauty’, veered close to the merely boring.

Staged in conjunction with Joffrey Ballet Chicago, the production features both dance and singing. Since Oropesa sings with silver tones and moves as gracefully as a dancer, she is a natural for the ...

“Prokofiev considered himself to be primarily a composer of opera, and his return to Russia in the mid-1930s was partially motivated by the goal to renew his activity in this genre. His Soviet career ...

Of today’s opera stars, tenor Rolando Villazón may be the “hottest” (if readers will allow that Entertainment Tonight term). He has gone from being an Operalia winner a few years back to assuming ...