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Claire Black of the Scotsman meets American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in Milano (click the link for the full article): Pop stars, soap stars, Big Brother contestants – it seems that anyone can now be a diva as long as they behave badly enou (read full article)
Anthony Tommasini reports from Bayreuth: There is a general and well-founded perception of the Bayreuth Festival as an elitist stronghold for opera, as much a shrine to Wagner as a festival of his works. And there is no ticket harder to come by. Wag (read full article)
So I’m spending the next year listening to a lot of American music and maybe finally getting to grips with Carter, the world’s oldest living composer. But, I’m starting at the simpler end with Copland. I’ve always thought Copland an excellen (read full article)
Is Scelsi the forgotten man of 20th century music par excellence? Well, perhaps not forgotten, as such. I do think that he didn’t, and doesn’t, fit neatly into the usual mould of musically and intellectually bankrupt avant-garde composers becaus (read full article)
Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg Serge Gainsbourg may have been an accidental sex symbol, but sex symbol he most certainly was. Just ask Jane Birkin, Catherine Deneuve and Brigitte Bardot, all of whom played a major role in his rich and colourful l (read full article)
One of the approaches to Schnittke is to regard him in the same way as many do Shostakovich, i.e. in relation to the Soviet regime. The difference is whereas Shostakovich had to respond to an ideology which was still vital, Schnittke’s music is mo (read full article)
A Doctor Who Prom is not a new idea. There has been a children/family type Prom for many years and they’ve always been very popular. It’s an excellent way of getting children to hear a real orchestra and I don’t regard it as “dumbing down” (read full article)
Barbara Ellen interviews Sir Paul McCartney for the Observer: Paul McCartney, rock star, family man, northern lad, contender for most famous person on the planet, is leaning back on a squashy sofa. In just a short time, he will announce that he is n (read full article)
Sir Charles Mackerras, who died on 14 July aged 84, was a conductor and musicologist, and introduced the passionate and heartfelt music of Leoš Janáček to British audiences. Detractors, however, dubbed him “Chuck ’em Up Charlie” for his fre (read full article)
Ringo Starr A teenage Beatles fan amassed an extraordinary photograph album of her heroes at their homes after Sir Paul McCartney gave her his band mates’ addresses. He told Sue Baker where to find John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr after (read full article)
Composer David Cope has spent the last 30 years teaching computers to create classical music. Nothing more needs to be said about this. (read full article)
Danielle de Niese’s new album Diva is released on Decca on 12 July. (read full article)
(The Bolton News) New York, Barcelona, Sydney, Sao Paulo – now Turton, near Bolton, has become the latest place to host a quirky art project which has brought music to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. From next month, pianos wi (read full article)
I remember fondly the BBC producing a series under this heading many years ago which highlighted works of great merit by lesser-known composers. Their craftsmanship, ideas and structure were in no way inferior to the works of the big names, but they (read full article)
I’ve just bought the Runnicles/BBCSO Tristan und Isolde. I played the Liebestod and was surprised and annoyed at the burst of applause and cheers at the end. I know it’s a recording of a live-in-front-of-an-audience concert, but I feel that keep (read full article)
Has anyone got any old scratchy vintage recordings which they love to death? I have Alma Rosé. She was the niece of Gustav Mahler, at the time director of the Vienna Opera, and the daughter of Arnold Rosé, concertmaster of the Opera Orchestra and (read full article)
Anneliese Rothenberger as Lulu Anneliese Rothenberger, an internationally known German soprano who sang with the Metropolitan Opera in New York in the 1960s, died on Monday in Switzerland. As befits a diva, her exact age had long been shrouded in obs (read full article)
The re-opening of one of the world’s leading opera houses helped to kick off Argentina’s 200th birthday celebrations on Monday, as the curtain was raised at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires for the first time in almost four years. An audience o (read full article)
I think the principal problem with someone saying that they “hate modern art” is the dismissal of a lot of very diverse works completed over a century or so, in widely differing circumstances by a host of unconnected artists. The people who say (read full article)
The curators and administrators of the Handel House Museum in Mayfair, London, are now preparing to pack up their files, dismantle their desks and open up the rooms where Hendrix lived to visitors to mark the 40th anniversary of his death. Twin blue (read full article)
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