image=http://www.operatoday.com/Les_Amours_de_Paris_et_d_He.png image_description=Les Amours de P‚ris et d’HÈlËne by Jacques-Louis David (1788) [MusÈe du ...

Loosely linked by the Drama Queens theme — all the arias were sung by female characters under some sort of pressure, the concert was really a way of dusting off music which has been neglected, partly ...

composer was devastated when the Paris OpÈra, the only theater in Paris then ...

It got a boost from the 1950/60s bel canto revival, but in recent decades it has seldom been revived. Gala takes Donizetti fans back to the last years of that revival, with a four-disc set comprised ...

Gaetano Donizetti’s first big success, Anna Bolena, serves as a “star vehicle” in the 2011 production from the Vienna State Opera, with Anna Netrebko in the title role and El?na Garan?a as Giovanna ...

Ezio Frigerio, set designer, and Franca Squarciapino, costumes, must have collaborated closely. Frigerio’s mammoth revolving turret/stairwell features the same gold-flake detailing as the ample fabric ...

The people of Judah are in mourning. The Overture is heard against a simple backdrop, focusing attention on the music, and not on the “false idols” of decorative frippery. In this time of crisis, the ...

Maybe it’s old news that Les Arts Florissants is actually an opera, not just the name of Early Music guru William Christie’s famed eponymous group of players. It is a 40 minute opera, or musical idyll ...

Time as a great healer or gentle eraser is a large part of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. If musing on transience and ageing are prevailing themes, that’s neatly balanced by the light entertainment ...

His celebrity-sibling, the soprano Nancy Storace, a favourite with Emperor Joseph II and prima buffa in the Italian opera troupe that he had established at the Burgtheater two years earlier, sang the ...

‘Canticle’ is the term Britten used to denote an extended setting of a text of spiritual substance. The five Canticles span his career: the first dates from 1947, two years after the celebrated ...

of ‘the Yellow Label’ have been central to the recording of Wagner’s ...