Singing to make you weep

Music is a serious business. Whether it’s love, death, heartbreak, loneliness, power, conflict, destruction, sin, faith, hope, despair… you name it, every weighty subject and state of mind has been ta

In December 1838, a few days after Berlioz had conducted a concert of his own works that included Harold in Italy, a four-movement ‘symphony with principal viola’, the composer found that his bank bal

● AS WE ALL KNOW, OPERA IS THE ...

Inspired by the Walter Scott novel, Berlioz’s Rob Roy of 1831 celebrates the Jacobite outlaw in a 15-minute overture for orchestra. Though he liked the main melody enough to re-use it in Harold in Ita

Mathias Vidal, Véronique Gens, Sandrine Piau et al; Les Pages et les Chantres du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles; Les Ambassadeurs – La Grande Écurie/Alexis Kossenko Alpha Classics ALPHA1193 1

Joyce DiDonato (mezzo), Time for Three Platoon PLAT29101 65:05 mins Is it a song cycle? An opera? Musical theatre? Kevin Puts’s new work Emily – No Prisoner Be, based on texts by Emily Dickinson, is a