Dying is an essential part of just about every opera plot. Whether husbands or male lovers act out of jealousy, or wives or female lovers go mad, opera has given us a delectable variety of violent and unnatural deaths. Yet

In 1843, César Franck began work on his first non-chamber work, the oratorio Ruth. The libretto by Alexandre Guillemin is inspired by the biblical “Book of Ruth” and arranged in the manner of an operatic text. In fact, the three-part

We have the 3 Bs, The Five, and the Six. They’re all from different countries and cover some 300 years. Do you know who they are? The Three Bs are J.S. Bach (1685-1750), Beethoven (1770-1827), and Brahms (1833-1897). In those

Louis Victor Jules Vierne was seemingly born under an unlucky star! He emerged into this word nearly blind on 8 October 1870. Two serious operations in 1877 finally enabled him to read large print, and he eventually learned Braille in

If you are working as a roofer, miner, logger, fisher, construction-equipment operator or in law enforcement, you have selected a profession that is designated as high-risk or safety sensitive. Although these jobs are not especially lucrative in terms of payment,

Musical instruments in China were traditionally classified into 8 groups delineated by the material used in the instrument: Silk, Bamboo, Wood, Stone, Metal, Clay, Gourd and Hide. We will look at selected instruments in six of these groups in this

Concert noun 1. a public musical performance in which a number of singers or instrumentalists, or both, participate. 2. a public performance, usually by an individual singer, instrumentalist, or the like; recital: Earlier this year, I took part in a

When art becomes distortion, we think of the 20th century as the time and place for this to become an art form. The British artist Francis Bacon (1909-1992) was a figurative painter who created bold images against isolated backgrounds. In