★★★★☆ A feast for the ears peppered with delicious performances, but an implausible plot leaves a sour taste. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The acclaimed musician has been presented with this year's Don Banks Music Award in honour of his contribution to music.

The Australian soprano has wowed audiences and critics alike in London, singing the title role in Bellini’s ‘Norma’.

Who was hot and who was not in the LGBT world of classical music? These 10 fabulous composers will float your mardi gras float!

Steve Vizard tells the story behind his new musical collaboration with Paul Grabowsky. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

American soprano Latonia Moore’s performance in the title role alone makes this home-grown DVD in a crowded market worth a look.

The D’Oyly Carte, famed for its association with the Gilbert & Sullivan operas since 1875, is now a memory. However its legacy lives on in many recordings and this 1958 version of The Mikado is arguably the best on record. Hearing it again I was struck afresh by the opera’s brilliance. In 1958 the company was still in fine fettle with a brilliant ensemble and had begun refreshing its principal line-up, such as replacing attenuated tenor Leonard Osborn with the superior Thomas Round. Ann Drummond-Grant was also a welcome change from the tradition of hooty altos; Jean Hindmarsh is a delightful Yum-Yum. Donald Adams delivers a splendid Mikado and Kenneth Sandford’s Pooh-Bah is first class. Sadly, as the patter man, Peter Pratt was never as good as Martyn Green or John Reed who came before and after him. Reed is heard to advantage as a spirited defendant in Trial by Jury. At 35 minutes and without dialogue, Trial by Jury is the miracle that got G&S off to such a fine start in 1875. This excellent recording is almost a match for the benchmark under Sir Malcom Sargent on EMI. Compared to… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4…

This ode to Bergman's masterwork, Persona, is technically virtuosic but ultimately impenetrable.

Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant star in the new film about the world’s most infamously bad (yet indomitable) singer.

To celebrate the 200th birthday of Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Opera Australia will offer 200 tickets for just 200 cents.

In our latest magazine, ten leading brains decide who and what changed the course of music history.

Based on the premise that far more operas were written before 1750 than since, Pinchgut has been unearthing a rich stash of rediscovered treasures for Sydney audiences since 2002. Starting off with one production a year, the company under its Artistic Director Antony Walker has moved to two short seasons at the intimate City Recital Hall. For its 2014 offerings Pinchgut moved to the decade before the French Revolution to stage two contrasting works, Salieri’s comedy The Chimney Sweep and Gluck’s Euripidean saga of parricide, matricide and near-fratricide, Iphigénie en Tauride, which marked the 300th anniversary of the composer’s birth. You can now share the performance of the latter, containing some of Gluck’s finest music, with this live two-disc set. Premiered in Paris in 1789 Iphigénie was an instant hit and this disc shows why – the vocal and orchestral writing are both wonderful. The mystery is why it has taken so long for it to re-emerge from relative obscurity. Gluck pitches the listener straight into the dramatic action. Dispensing with an overture we hear the timpani signalling an approaching storm at sea off Scythia where Iphigénie, exiled after the goddess Diana saved her from being sacrificed by her father…