Shanghai – the beautiful city on the Yangtze River – was one of the first major cities of China opened to the West in 1842 and seems to have always had one foot firmly in China while, at the same

Bass Valerian Ruminski was recently in Hong Kong as Colline in a production of La bohème. Next, you might see him in Calgary in Eugene Onegin, or in Geneva as Dr Bartolo in the Barber of Seville. Or, you might

It’s of some tribute to librettist W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) and composer Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) that 140 years after their first comic operas hit the stage, we can still find a great deal of humour in their works and many of

They all die at the end, those poor opera women. Madama Butterfly kills herself, Tosca dies off the parapet of the Castel Sant’Angelo, and Carmen has a face-off with her former soldier lover.

“What do you actually do?” and “What is your day job?” are all-too familiar questions to musicians. People are also endlessly fascinated about practising – “so how much practising do you actually do?” – and imagine we spend most of

Hilger was born in 1904 in the small town of Trauenau, Austro-Hungarian Empire, the youngest of eighteen children (only four survived.) Elsa and her two sisters, Maria and Greta, were prodigiously gifted young musicians. After the family heard the news

In this follow-up article about classical music apps, we turn to ones suitable for music-lovers and for those wishing to learn more about and listen to classical music.