Zemlinsky’s The Dwarf in Budapest

IMAGINE you’ve got a birthday coming up. What would you like this year? How about a dwarf? I didn’t think so. Well, how about a dwarf who doesn’t know how ugly and misshapen he is, and in fact thinks he’s attractive and loveable?

Alexandrina Milcheva Opens the 9th Easter Festival at the Sofia National Opera

On April 23, the 70-year old Bulgarian mezzo, Alexandrina Milcheva, gave a recital of a full value program at the Sofia opera, including airs from: “Orpheus” (Gluck), “Dido and Eneas”(Purcell), “Faust” (Gounod), “Il Trovatore”, “Werther”(Massenet), “Adrienne Lecouvreur”(Cilea)and “Carmen.”

GLUCK: Orphee et Euridice

Christoph Willibald Gluck’s (1714-1787) Orfeo ed Euridice is an opera that began a major reform of Italian opera and the way it was composed and performed in the eighteenth century.

Summer Courses and institutes for singers at New England Conservatory

Here is a list of courses and workshops at NEC this summer that relate to singing and voice training.

Kilar’s Missa pro Pace at Alice Tully Hall

Amid the annual parade of world-class orchestras passing through New York, a visit by the Wroclaw Philharmonic of Poland could easily have been overlooked – and to some extent it was, in a sparsely attended concert at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday afternoon. But on Saturday evening, partly through an accident of timing, the orchestra played to a nearly full house in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Daily Telegraph Interviews Richard Farnes of Opera North

Opera North is on sparkling form right now – but how will it cope with its forthcoming period of homelessness? Rupert Christiansen meets its inspirational music director Richard Farnes

Boulevard Solitude at Graz

In the middle of 2006, when you’d rather scream than hear another note of Mozart, take heed of a less-heralded musical birthday: Hans Werner Henze will turn 80.

In the News: Henze and Boulez Wow Paris; Faust at the Met; Chanticleer at the Temple of Dendur

How do composers famous in their younger days for radicalism look to the future of their art and reputation as they reach their 80th birthday? Paris in the past few days has been witness to hints of how a baton change might occur for two eminent seniors of music, Frenchman Pierre Boulez and German Hans Werner Henze.

Michelle DeYoung Steps In

In the wake of soprano Helene Hunt Lieberson cancellation of a Friday appearance at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall, management was fortunate to land Michelle DeYoung, one of the finest in a strong contingent of young American mezzos.

BRITTEN: The Turn of the Screw

Britten biographer Humphrey Carpenter quotes a friend of the composer’s as calling Miles “a male Lolita.” For all the blather, if not bother, about innocence in The Turn of the Screw, I’ve never felt there was much of it present among the inhabitants of Bly. There’s sure a nasty case of naiveté going around among the grown-ups though.