Johann Strauss (Father) was the darling of the Viennese dance craze and simply known as “The Tyrant of Waltz.” As the leader of a hugely popular dance orchestra, he sent the pleasure-seeking and cheery population of imperial Vienna into throbbing

What the audience doesn’t know behind the scenes typically won’t hurt their enjoyment of a performance. But these recent mishaps chill a performer’s bones even if in retrospect we like recounting these stories! A dear friend of mine, award-winning actress,

The 2023 edition of the Proms, “the world’s greatest classical music festival”, has just ended. As usual, this year’s two-month season of concerts was punctuated by conversations about audience noise and the now rather tedious rants about applause between movements.

Say the phrase “the Gershwin siblings” and any music lover immediately thinks of George and Ira Gershwin, two brothers famous for co-writing some of the most famous songs in the Great American Songbook. But George and Ira also had a

A féerie was a French theatrical genre and, as a ‘fairy play’ combined music, dance, mime, and acrobatics, in a fantasy plot set off by spectacular scenery and stage effects. Some critics noted that the visuals, with the transformational scene

Mozart fell in love with one. Another one caused a scandal by moving in with him before they were married. Yet another premiered the role of The Queen of the Night in his opera The Magic Flute. And one helped

In 1926, the Metropolitan Opera staged the world premiere of the American composer John Alden Carpenter’s 1924 ballet Skyscrapers. This was in February, at the height of the season and it was a triple-bill evening: Gianni Schicchi with Giuseppe De

During the final decade of his life, Jean Sibelius achieved great popularity in English-speaking countries while central Europe and France remained essentially uninterested. Sibelius’ music polarized along ideological lines, and his supporters considered him the “last true successor to Beethoven