The 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody is a foot-stomping celebration of the British rock band Queen, and their extraordinary lead singer Freddie Mercury. While its portrayals of Mercury’s life and sexuality and of the other band members were criticized, actor Rami

Let’s start this episode of our musical universe series with a trick question. Who was the most famous and most successful opera composer during Mozart’s time? And while it would be tempting to think that Wolfie had his hand in

“I have also, for practice,” Wolfgang Amadeus writes to his father from Mannheim, “arranged the air ‘Non so d’onde viene’ which has been so charmingly composed by Bach. Just because I know that of Bach so well, and it pleases

Although Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz is frequently portrayed as the liberation of German cultures from foreign influences, we should not forget that a “veritable Freischütz mania flooded all England.” Productions of the opera opened in London in

A number of historical documents preserve an amusing little anecdote about Franz Liszt’s visit to the Ottoman Empire in 1847. It basically reads as follows: “After a 54-hour long trip from Galatz, Liszt had at last reached Constantinople. Here, he

From his extended Italian journey, and after having dodged a serious flu epidemic, Wolfgang Amadeus writes to his sister. “I am still well, and, thank God, in the land of the living. Tell Herr Johannes Hagenauer that the Berlein family

When the British explorer extraordinaire Richard Francis Burton published his translation of the traditional Middle Eastern stories in The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night in 1885, he brought the extraordinary wealth of Arabic storytelling to the West.

When Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz (The Marksman) was first produced at the Schauspielhaus in Berlin in June 1821, the musical world was stunned. Setting his career as a pianist and critic aside, Weber had created a work that