Mehta brings an Aussie take on Vienna back home to Delhi.

The young Mexican conductor will lead the Queensland Symphony Orchestra for the next three years. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

★★★½☆ Williamson and Sitwell make strange, yet oddly perfect, bedfellows. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Alondra de la Parra chats with Limelight’s Editor about her life, passions and aims for the orchestra. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Limelight's Editor chats to Sydney Festival's outgoing director as he celebrates their 40th with a raft of big-hitters.

★★★★½ Robertson’s ‘from the heart’ Mass returns to the heart indeed. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

“I thought that it was a nutty idea, but nutty enough to be intriguing,” says best-selling author. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Or why ousted Prime Minister Tony Abbott should have paid more attention to his Shakespeare.

The SSO’s chief explains why he’s taken his time before conducting the music Beethoven never heard. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Nicholas Daniel finds similarities in two different English works for the oboe. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

How extraordinary, when you think about it, is Guillaume Tell in the career of Gioacchino Rossini? At the age of 37, at the very height of his powers, he writes his longest, grandest, and probably his greatest French opera, only to then fall silent for decades except for a few naughty piano works and the odd bon mot. He must have known (or feared) that he could do no better and, listening to it all over again, his final opera is a very fine thing indeed. This outing comes from the admirable and ambitious annual Rossini Festival in Pesaro, and if there’s one thing they invariably do well it’s pick a cast. I really can’t imagine a better sung bit of bel canto than this. Add to that a magnificently detailed reading of the score, plus a thoughtful production, and this is nigh on four hours of operatic heaven. Graham Vick’s neatly politicised staging shifts the action from late medieval times to the Swiss ‘Downton Abbey’ era, focusing on the class oppression that was running its course round about then rather than on the stark nationalism of the original. Against a bleak, white set, the drama is played out effectively…

Editor’s Choice, Opera – August 2015 A few years ago I welcomed unreservedly the revelatory recording of Leonardo Vinci’s late opera Artaserse (Virgin 6028692) as an undiscovered masterpiece. Featuring a stellar line-up of no less than five countertenors (thanks to prudish Roman fashions, the women’s parts too were written for men), the opera, composed in the high-Neapolitan gallant style is a glorious succession of imaginatively scored virtuosic arias with no duds and plenty of hummable tunes. With the same cast bar one, this DVD is in some ways even better as the confusion between who is singing what, when so many roles are sung in falsetto, is no longer an issue. Artaserse was one of the hit libretti of the period, set by everyone who was anyone, but Vinci’s is rather special. The villainous vizier (Artabano) has killed his king letting suspicion fall upon his own son (Arbace), best friend to the new king (Artaserse). When Arbace won’t dob on dad, a tangled web of blame and deceit ensues before all comes good in a magnanimous finale involving a poisoned chalice. Silviu Purca˘rete’s production is the campest thing you’ll see this side of Eurovision, with costumes that would make Cinderella’s…