Think you know classical music history? Think again. From the fact that many listeners in the history of classical music never heard a full orchestra, to the rediscovery of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons after nearly two centuries of obscurity, to the

There have been many turning point years in the history of classical music. However, for our money, the 365-day period between the start of June 1912 and the end of May 1913 was the most important single year in classical

American composer Mark Edwards Wilson takes us around the world on Dangerous Journeys. We start in the white water of a river to brave its rapids. We then visit a lonely nightingale, singing amidst the ruins of its native Ukraine.

Hieronymus von Colloredo, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, had a long political career, but today he is best known as Mozart’s strict employer…and eventual enemy. His efforts to modernise Salzburg by constraining spending and curbing musical performances brought him into direct

For centuries, the specter of tuberculosis – once known as “consumption” – haunted every person’s life. In fact, in the 1800s, tuberculosis caused about a quarter of all deaths in Europe and the United States. If you yourself didn’t die

The Baroque Era, lasting roughly from 1600 to 1750, was a golden age for classical music, yet the names most often celebrated today are almost entirely male. However, a remarkable group of women composers were writing music for royal courts,

A little-known chapter of the Second World War is the subject of the recently premiered and stunning new work Émigré. It’s an oratorio about the thousands of Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany seeking a haven in Shanghai in the

Some of opera’s biggest box-office champions began life as spectacular misfires. From Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (heckled by a claque in 1786) to Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (booed off the La Scala stage in 1904), opera performances have been ruined