August 1876 wagner sees the bigger picture as the ring opens in bayreuth

In 1984, a truncated version of Maurice Ravel’s orchestral piece Boléro was used to accompany a routine by British ice-dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics. The p

Musical instruments have power, simply as things. They speak. They generate emotion. They tell stories about life, death, happiness and sadness – and about the past, which they can resurrect with curi

In her 2001 book about the city, travel writer Jan Morris famously described Trieste as ‘the meaning of nowhere’ – a place left behind by history and by its political geography. A quarter of a century

Just two decades after the premiere of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, the Soviet Union paid a New York opera company to stage performances there. The year was 1956 and the Cold War was well underwa

Last week, we heralded the 1911 Vauxhall Prince Henry as one of the most influential cars of the 20th century, being perhaps the first proper production sports car. But what was the inspiration behind

Jan Smaczny is enthralled by Isabelle Faust’s unique approach to the demanding material of Bach’s little-known violin works JS Bach Sonatas for Violin and Continuo Isabelle Faust (violin); Kristin von