The Russian composer Sergey Vasilenko (1872-1956) might not be a household name today, but he was considered a master orchestrator during his days as professor at the Moscow Conservatory. He originally studied music theory with Grechaninov, and while studying law

No single instrument served the cult of self-expression more comprehensively than the piano. It could emulate the rising and falling inflections of human speech and the outlines of non-verbal expressions from a sigh to a scream. Frédéric Chopin (1810-49), more

Morning can be a time for a slow start – a reflection on the day to come, a slow sip of a warm beverage, waiting for the sun to make its appearance. We’ll ignore those mornings we used to have

Benjamin Britten was working on the full-length ballet The Prince of the Pagodas when he wrote to Edith Sitwell that he was “on the threshold of a new musical world.” This project, slated for Covent Garden, was set aside for

Mozart operas are filled with commedia dell’arte stock characters, scenarios and situations that provide the framework for jokes, buffoonery, and just plain silliness! Some famous stock characters of the commedia include a pair of young people suffering from a wildly

When the writer, critic, poet, translator, and composer Peter Cornelius (1824-1874) approached his close friend and patron Franz Liszt with the idea of writing an opera based on a story from “The Arabian Nights,” Liszt strongly disapproved. Cornelius had written

How do you take the morning, musically? Bright and brassy alarm bells, a gentle reminder from the buzzer, the shock of morning radio? We decided to survey music for the earliest time of day: Dawn. We’ll start with Mussorgsky’s music

First performed in Munich in 1811, the delightful one-act Singspiel Abu Hassan is based on a famous episode in “The Arabian Nights.” Set to music by Carl Maria von Weber, the opera features Abu Hassan (tenor) and his devoted wife