CLASSICAL ICONOCLAST

The Royal Opera House itself is the star of this new production of Richard Wagner Tannhäuser. An intriguing twist on an opera that pits orgi...

NEW IMPROVED and formal review of Wagner Die Walküre at La Scala  Milan, with photos. Interesting because it's mega high profile (at lea...

Courtesy of Harrison Parrott here's a clip of Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing Elliott Carters Two Diversions/2

"I don't know if the world is farce but it is true that I always like to laugh and be surrounded by funny and imaginative friends. ...

So it's Christmas, and The Messiah will be enforced everywhere. Must be Hell if you don't believe, or aren't Christian or whate...

"If Wagner had been a butcher, he would have made ideal hamburgers, 20gr beef, 30gr pork, 50 gr....." said Daniel Barenboim in th...

Hugues Cuénod died on December 3rd, aged 108. He knew everyone from Mary Garden (Debussy's muse) to Heinz Hollinger and many young singe...

As promised, here is a link to the formal review of the Barbican Handel Alcina in Opera Today , one of the biggest opera sites on the net,...

Andreas Scholl and Philippe Jaroussky at the Barbican tonight. Together they can be even better than on their own because of the rapport. N...

c Monday's lunchtime concert at the Wigmore Hall features Mark Padmore and Kristian Bezuidenhout. He's singing Schumann songs and Li...

"I used to be a rock." "I used to be a bough." "And my Dad used to be a lion" cry the cast of Handel's Al...

Another in my sort-of series of soldier songs. Richard Tauber sings Schumann's Die beiden Grenadiere op 49/1. This appeals to me becaus...

The real "Alma Problem" isn't Alma herself so much as the sentimentalized, indiscriminate way the myth distorts real understan...

It's September 1730, and this is the fotrtress at Küstrin on the Oder. The man about to be beheaded is Hans Herman von Katte, a nobleman...

The biggest casualty of this Mahler anniversary year is Mahler himself.  There's money to be made. So Mahler has been repackaged so he c...