September 1834 donizetti’s opera comes to a bloody end as sopranos scrap

Robert Thicknesse on Opera

In other circumstances, it would be heartening to see an opera getting national attention. Yet once again, the recent buzz around Covent Garden concerns politics rather than performances. The latest f

What Italian opera signified to the Habsburg court

Music was the antidote to stuffy court life that Marie Antoinette craved. Henrietta Bredin explains how the doomed Dauphine reinvigorated the French opera scene

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

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