This is the fifth book by acclaimed Scottish pianist Susan Tomes, and unlike her previous books whose primary focus is on the exigencies of life as a professional musician – from ensemble playing and touring, coughers in the audience to

This summer’s Salzburg Festival chatter was dominated by the enthusiastic reviews of the new production of Richard Strauss’ Salome and its new star soprano Asmik Grigorian.

Madrid pulled together an absolute dream production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, with a cast few houses could even think about. This production by David Alden, first commissioned for the English National Opera in 2008, sets the scene in

Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, the opera company based in the Western section of the formerly divided city, put on grand opera at its most opulent with Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Gioconda. Rarely performed these days due to the work’s staggering length, large

Humphrey Burton made his first connection with Leonard Bernstein when Bernstein came over to London for the premiere of Candide. It had opened to disappointing reviews in New York three years earlier and the only part of the work that

On 18 and 21 July, Sir Mark Elder conducts concert performances of the world premiere of an opera that was previously thought to have been consigned to oblivion: Donizetti’s L’Ange de Nisida.

Set in 1962, when England was on the cusp of the Swinging Sixties, ‘On Chesil Beach’ by British author Ian McEwan examines the tension between the modern (represented by the male character Edward) and an earlier, more sexually repressed age

In the late summer of their careers, divas like to stake out some territory that ensures their legacy. Maria Callas championed bel canto rarities, Cecilia Bartoli reinvigorated baroque treasures, Joyce di Donato promotes contemporary American Jake Heggie. A cursory overview