In conversation with Antony Hermus

“Organised chaos!” is how the Dutch conductor Antony Hermus describes the first production rehearsal of the Prologue of Ariadne auf Naxos, when he chats to me from his hotel room…

A Child in Striped Pyjamas: a new chamber opera by Noah Max

When John Boyne’s book The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was published in 2006, it immediately became an international bestseller. Boyne’s ‘fable’ presents a fictional account of the horrors of a…

In conversation with Mary Bevan

Operas sometimes seem like the proverbial London bus: you wait at the stop for ages and then three come along at once.  This year, the bus’s destination has been Alcina’s…

Magic and Music: Wexford Festival Opera 2022 – in conversation with Rosetta Cucchi

Magicians and monsters, gods and ghosts, witches and the wonderous: the mysterious and the marvellous are woven into the fabric of opera, the music itself expressing the enigmatic and ineffable…

Friendship in Song: An Intimate Art – the 21st Oxford Lieder Festival

Music is a profound means of forming conversations, connections and communities.  From the salon to the soirée, artists and friends have gathered to share music and ideas, politics and passions. …

Kaleidoscope: in conversation with Fatma Said

kaleidoscope (OED): ‘an optical instrument containing pieces of coloured glass which may be rotated into constantly altering, brightly coloured, symmetrical figures and reflections; a constantly changing group of bright colours…

The Vache Baroque Festival 2022: in conversation with co-founder Betty Makharinsky

The myth of Orpheus and the story of opera are inextricable.  Gifted the first musical instrument, the lyre, by his father, Apollo, Orpheus and his art represent man’s need to…

A premiere recording of Handel’s pasticcio, Caio Fabbricio, by London Early Opera

1733 was not a good year for George Frideric Handel.  His business affairs were in a shaky state, the collapse of the Royal Academy in 1728 having forced him, in…

Staging Handel’s Tamerlano: a conversation with Dionysios Kyropoulos

Tamerlane (1336-1405): Mongol conqueror, masterful military leader and tactician, murderous tyrant.  The son of a nomadic shepherd Taraqai – a minor nobleman from the Barlas tribe – Tamerlane (also known…

Mirages: Roderick Williams and Roger Vignoles explore the ‘art’ of French song

The repertory of French mélodie must comprise many thousands of songs.  The genre, which developed in the early 1800s and reached full maturity in the second half of the century, was…