Rattle’s wizardry conjures ethereal Debussy and earth-shattering Bruckner.
July 30, 2015
The superstar tenor criticises his former label for deceptively undermining his new Puccini album on Sony.
July 28, 2015
New Chief Conductor’s impressive Beethoven and stellar Elgar hits the Digital Concert Hall.
July 27, 2015
★★★★★ Lully joins the circus to make a divertissement fit for a king
July 22, 2015
Meet Opera Australia’s new Figaro, the Italian bass baritone who’s turning ‘buffo’ into a total art form. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in
July 21, 2015
With opera companies more and more regularly dazzled by the lights of Broadway, we investigate the seemingly irresistible rise of musical theatre.
July 17, 2015
Or do we ever allow ourselves space to let our senses enjoy?
July 16, 2015
Joyce El-Khoury on being thrown to Donizetti’s lions. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in
July 16, 2015
Baroque specialist, harpsichordist and pioneering conductor of Handel opera passes at 80.
July 15, 2015
We get to the bottom of the quirky British vocal ensemble and its ‘beany’ Italian name.
July 15, 2015
★★★★★ Donizetti was one of the most prolific opera composers of all time, an appealingly personable fellow (if you read the letters), and an extraordinary professional capable of turning out a work in just a few weeks. That very facility though has led to a general dismissal of his music as too easy, rushed, derivative, or worse. Les Martyrs disproves all of these. A late work (1840), this grandest of his French grand operas was written simultaneously with the slighter, yet inexplicably more popular La Fille du Régiment, but the two works couldn’t be more different – one a trivially sucrose French confection, the other a profound meditation on faith and duty. But while Daughter of the Regiment went on to conquer the world, Les Martyrs sank without a trace. That latter statement isn’t entirely true. Les Martyrs was itself an expanded reworking of Poliuto, an opera Donizetti had written for Naples that fell foul of the censors and so never made it to the stage. Poliuto has been championed intermittently over the years (there’s a superb live version with Callas, Corelli and Bastianini) and Glyndebourne have just given its British premiere, but Les Martyrs is a horse of a…
July 15, 2015
Lady Rattle talks about growing up Czech, managing diaries and bringing up a musical family.
July 15, 2015