In 1917, Igor Stravinsky and Pablo Picasso made an excursion to Naples, with the composer commenting on its “half Spanish character, on the pleasure he found in the aquarium, and in the Neapolitan watercolors.” They also attended a commedia dell’arte

Like countless people around the world, I recently settled in to watch at least part of the coronation of Charles III and Queen Camilla. This ceremony has great tradition and theatricality, from the arrival of the golden carriage to the

When famed conductor Otto Klemperer was roughly nine years of age, he encountered “the man who was to be the central inspiration of his entire life as a musician.” He remembers “seeing Mahler on the street when I was quite

The impact of the loss of life under the Nazi regime was incalculable. One of the only ways we can begin to comprehend the scale of the destruction is by looking at the impact that the Holocaust had on individual

The 2023 Met Gala brought out all kinds of dresses, including Karl Lagerfeld’s 40-year-old violin dress, designed in 1983 for Chloé, worn here by Olivia Wilde. But Lagerfeld wasn’t the only designer to find his inspiration in the instruments of

Gabriel Fauré was born on 12 May 1845 in the small town of Pamiers, in the department of Ariège, in the south of France. He was the youngest of six children born to Toussaint-Honoré Fauré (1810–85) and Marie-Antoinette-Hélène Lalène-Laprade (1809–87),

The English press has affectionately dubbed Emmanuelle Haïm “The Ms Dynamite of the French Baroque.” Born on 11 May 1962 in Paris, she grew up in a highly musical household. Her father’s family hailed from Istanbul, and all of them

It’s still quite unusual these days to attend a concert where the programme begins with a quiet and/or slow piece. Often performers have a favourite “warm up” piece, one with which they feel very comfortable, which is a helpful way