With his marriage to Dedé Wolff in serious trouble, Astor Piazzolla was finding solace in the arms of other women. “I am now seeing a youngish lass, divine,” he told a friend. The affair with the “youngish lass” was short-lived

Frederick Delius’ opera A Village Romeo and Juliet leaves in a puzzle with the title – is this a tragedy of young love like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, or does the addition of ‘A Village’ make it something else?

Odetta Maria Wolff, affectionately known as Dedé, first laid eyes on Astor Piazzolla at a tea party in September 1940. She was not impressed at all, and found him “a rather ugly boy, round faced, who paid more attention to

Pauline Viardot (1821-1910) was one of the most celebrated mezzo-sopranos of her time! During a remarkable career spanning almost a quarter of a century, she performed on the most prestigious stages around the world, and her distinguished interpretations decisively shaped

Ravi Shankar’s opera Sukanya receives its world premier with a four city UK tour in May 2017. The work is a collaboration between the Royal Opera House of Covent Garden and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. It takes as its subject

Have you ever come across the composers Gulielmo Baldini and Dag Henrik Esrum-Hellerup? Baldini hailed from the beautiful and ancient Italian city of Ferrara, and his most famous collection of madrigals for 5 and 6 voices was published in Venice

Chopin’s ‘Minute’ Waltz has long fascinated the fleet of finger with its seeming titular challenge to a performance within the time indicated. The title, however, has long been deceptive – it’s generally read as a noun (as in ‘it will

In 1967, Aaron Copland wrote a commissioned work for the New York Philharmonic’s 125th anniversary. The twelve-tone piece Inscape opens with a bang – with 11 of the 12 tones of the scale sounding at once.