CLASSICAL ICONOCLAST

Operas at the Guildhall School of Music are always fun. Currently, there's a double bill of satires on the sacred institution of marria...

Twenty years ago today, the protests at Tienanmen square in Beijing were crushed. The protests seemed to suggest a new era, like the May 4th...

Mendelssohn 's Elijah suffers from its popularity. Late 19th century Victorians saw it as an opportunity to go overboard. There were ...

A fragment of the palindrome in Act 2 of Lulu – perfect symmetry. Circles within circles, a multi ring circus, spiralling, dizzying, twisti...

Images can speak as loud as words. "Reading" images in music, opera and stage is not so different from reading a poem or a paintin...

In April 2010, the ENO, London, will stage a new production of Hans Werner Henze's opera Elegy for Young Lovers. Henze is undervalued ...

The big buzz in town's the new Lulu at the Royal Opera House, London, starting June 4th. Word of mouth is spreading fast that it's g...

This day, 26th May, marks the 85th birthday of Professor Henry-Louis de La Grange. Prof. de La Grange is the world's foremost authority ...

Currently available for listening (4 euros for 48 hours) on the Berliner Philharmoniker website is Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Requiem fü...

This is a firecracker label. There used to be lots of small firecracker factories in Macau, where firecrackers were rolled, filled and tie...

Lieder and Opera are different worlds, where different values apply. In opera, a singer has to compete with others, wi...

"Too much sex and politics" is the usual rallying cry of those who don't like opera staging. But sometimes sex and politics ar...

A friend, who knows more about theatre than I ever will, praised the new production of Peter Grimes at the ENO. “It’s what opera direction...

“So far I have employed words and the human voice …….t o express symphonically only with immense breadth”, said Mahler of this symphony. “B...

Mahler connection. Erich Korngold's father was Julius Korngold, the formidable music critic who dominated Vienna in Mahler's time. ...