Gioachino Rossini’s opera “The Barber of Seville” is one of the most fun operas in the entire repertoire. It’s full of humour and romantic encounters, and for a change, nobody dies. The story is set in Sevilla, Spain during the

As concert life begins to return to something resembling “normal” after months of silence – the result of government restrictions in response to the coronavirus pandemic – venues, promoters and indeed the performers themselves can do a great deal to

George Frideric Handel premiered his opera Serse on 15 April 1738 at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket in London. The composer had decided on a semi-historical plot involving the hot-blooded Persian tyrant Xerxes. It is a rather complicated plot, typical of

I often explain how many — if not all — artists create; in my opinion, the saying that good artists copy and great artists steal should be admitted as common truth. While it is often well-hidden and sometimes resembles a

We don’t think of the late Freddie Mercury (1946-1991) in the realm of classical music except for his duets with Montserrat Caballée. Secretly though, the world of classical music has been looking at the music of Freddie Mercury and dragging

Perhaps some of you don’t know that the great cellist and pedagogue János Starker began his illustrious career as an orchestral musician. He played in Broadway orchestras too. Born in Budapest July 5, 1924, as a wunderkind, Starker performed all

The American composer Charles Ives has often been associated with experimental music, or rather advanced music. One does not simply immerse himself in the academic music world through him. Indeed, his works include polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements and

Throughout the history of music, there have been a couple of events and inventions that have revolutionised both how music was created and how it was experienced. The invention of musical notation, the keyboard and later the piano, the development