The legendary American soprano brings jazz and Broadway classics Down Under. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The experimental director brought the “creative genius” of classical composers to life on screen. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Australian countertenor David Hansen might be the first male singer in over 250 years to tackle the role of Ottone.

What is the opera singer Nathalie Stutzmann doing on the cover of her new album with a baton in her hand? She may be a Prima Donna, but she’s certainly wearing the pants for this recording, in which she sings with and conducts her own period ensemble, Orfeo 55, even wielding a tambourine on the final track. The French contralto is undoubtedly a musicians’ singer, and her insights into this repertoire, as a frequent star of Naïve’s Vivaldi opera edition, are invaluable. Prima Donna emphatically reclaims these arias from the castrati, acknowledging Vivaldi’s own preference for the warmth of the female contralto voice. He would have loved Stutzmann’s – smooth and velvety across all registers and precise in coloratura despite a rich vibrato. Her focus, however, seems to be sculpting a fine melodic line rather than building the kind of dramatic intensity needed in Juditha’s Agitata infido flatu. She is at her most persuasive, then, luxuriating in the slower tempi of Cor mio che prigion sei and Transit aetas. But some high-energy moments impress: lively recitative in Gemo in un punto e fremo, a peppy L’innocenza sfortunata (this version is the most fun I’ve heard on disc) and… Continue reading Get…

How millions of YouTube hits and a phone call from Elton John rocketed two classically trained cellists to stardom. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The glamorous Korean soprano on “flirting” with her audience, meeting Dame Joan, and singing with her dog. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The story of opera from its origins in the Italian Baroque to the singular vision of Wagner and beyond.

Schubert’s final collection of songs, compiled posthumously under the title Schwanengesang, may not trace a narrative journey as unified as those mapped out in Winterreise or Die schöne Müllerin, but the most perceptive interpreters create a dramatic arc all of their own. The final disc in Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis’s triptych of the great Schubert song cycles finds them as emotionally attuned to the music and to one another as in previous volumes. Few tenors can give such potent voice to the bitterness Schubert poured into the lieder of his final year, but Padmore’s engagement with the text (well-rounded diction with plenty of “ch” in the “ach”!) and variety of tone place him among the best. His is a light instrument, but never lightweight – just listen to him bemoan carrying a world of sorrow on his shoulders in Atlas. Although he has developed a wide, almost braying vibrato in recent years, this actually works in his favour here, adding searing stabs of melodic intensity. And he can still rein it in for a warm, pure line, as he does when gently enfolding us in the Serenade.  He could not have asked for a more steadfast, sensitive… Continue reading…

A controversial new production puts the master composer in chains. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

These 12 games demonstrate why music for Xbox has bested the Hollywood film score.

The magazine pays tribute to Joan Sutherland a year after her death.

La Stupenda's spectacular original costumes are on display in London's Royal Opera House.