Two months from now, on 4 December 2026, the world will be commemorating the 50th anniversary of the death of Benjamin Britten. The Wigmore Hall, which saw so many premieres…
Author: Alexander Hall
Beautiful Face Meets Beautiful Soul: Bampton Classical Opera Does Grétry’s Zemira e Azor Proud
You don’t have to be among the cognoscenti of the writings of Carl Gustav Jung to be familiar with two of his most important concepts: the collective unconscious with its layering of…
Hamburg State Opera’s New Production of Verdi’s Macbeth Plays Mind Games
Verdi knew what he was talking about. Writing to his librettist Francesco Piave about Shakespeare’s “Scottish Play”, he declared: “This tragedy is one of the greatest creations of Man. If…
PROMS 2026: The Met Orchestra and Mahler
When Alma and Gustav Mahler arrived in New York just before the Christmas of 1907, they were installed in a lavishly appointed suite at the Hotel Majestic, with views overlooking…
PROMS 2026: A Call to Revolution with the LA Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel
In this instance dictionaries do not leave room for ambiguity: a revolution is a sudden, fundamental change. As a branding name, it has been much prized by all kinds of…
PROMS 2026: The CBSO and Kazuki Yamada Pay Tribute to John Adams at the BBC Proms
Bruckner, Sibelius, John Adams: you only need to hear a snatch or two of their writing to recognise the composer in question. In the case of Adams, the label of…
PROMS 2026: The Great Known Unknown: Ryan Bancroft Views the Afterlife with BBC Welsh Forces
When that final cut-off point arrives, when the Great Reaper pays us all the inevitable visit, are we really any the wiser as to the next step, what follows, what…
PROMS 2026: Noseda returns to the BBC Philharmonic at the Proms
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: Beethoven’s Ninth at the Proms. A regular annual fixture, for a long time it occupied the final Friday before the Last Night,…
Two Large Servings of German Romanticism with Florian Boesch
Loewe: the German word for lion. There was Lerner and Loewe, of course. Except that the 20th century example of Loewe is rarely mentioned on its own. But there is…
Doomed from the Start: the Fate of Dido and Aeneas in Purcell’s Opera
The balcony scene of Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet includes Juliet telling Romeo: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.” Names matter…