The Children’s Hour: an eclectic and enlightening new disc from baritone Gareth Brynmor John

Between the dark and the daylight,      When the night is beginning to lower,Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,      That is known as the Children’s Hour. The nineteenth-century poet Henry…

The House of Life: David Butt Philip and James Baillieu at Leighton House

The Rossetti family, according to William Michael, in Some Reminiscences (1906), ‘were not a musical family; they had no gift in that direction … no craving to be constantly hearing…

English Touring Opera announce the appointment of Gerry Cornelius as Music Director

English Touring Opera is delighted to announce the appointment of Gerry Cornelius as the company’s new Music Director. Born of Irish & Sri Lankan parentage and raised in south-east London,…

An absorbing, imaginative ‘enactment’ of the St John Passion from Oxford Bach Soloists

Last April, writing in the Observer, Fiona Maddocks lamented her first Easter without the mysteries and joys of Bach.  ‘This year all performances have been cancelled.  Our lives have already…

Opera Holland Park releases The House of Life with David Butt Philip and James Baillieu

Ahead of the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s birth in 2022, Opera Holland Park is releasing a performance of The House of Life. Leading British tenor David Butt Philip and the…

Tête à Tête, The Opera Festival: How to successfully put on live performances during a pandemic

Ahead of its 2021 return, Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival has released a video and other assets with key tips on how to successfully put on live performances in the new age of pandemic. The short…

Bach’s B Minor Mass: VOCES8 and the AAM on Easter Sunday

In 1818, the Swiss musician, writer and publisher Hans Georg Nägeli (1773–1836) issued a public advertisement announcing an ambitious publishing project, which would make a new Mass, that he had…

VOCES8 and the English Chamber Orchestra join forces on Good Friday to perform Bach and Fauré

For their Good Friday Live from London performance, VOCES8 joined forces with members of the English Chamber Orchestra at Cadogan Hall.  Barnaby Smith had moved from his countertenor’s perch to…

Royal Opera House confirms Antonio Pappano as Music Director until 2023/24 Season

he Royal Opera House today confirms that Sir Antonio Pappano will continue as Music Director of The Royal Opera until the end of the 2023/24 ROH Season. Tony will join…

ROH’s live-streamed double bill – The Seven Deadly Sins and Mahagonny Songspiel

Booking is now open for the Royal Opera House’s first live broadcast of 2021 – Bertolt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins and Mahagonny Songspiel. Produced by the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme, the double bill will be streamed live from the Main…