Why go to Padua in the heart of the winter, travelling five hours by train, and looking at a sad barren landscape of the Veneto to listen to an opera?

A standard evening at New York’s Metropolitan Opera is a healthy reminder why this opera house is casually referred to as the “Mighty Met”. The reprise of this Mefistofele production by Robert Carsen, last seen nearly twenty years ago, was

Major international cities are not the only places to hear high-quality music and stellar artists. The Schubert Club International Artist Series features the most thrilling artists on the planet, here in Saint Paul, Minnesota. For 136 years the Schubert Club

Igor Levit the fascinating German-Russian pianist was featured on the Schubert Club’s International Artists Series here in Saint Paul, Minnesota recently. The highly anticipated program had us on tenterhooks as the lone piano stood on the empty stage. Then out

Teatro “Cesare Caporali” sits in Panicale Umbria. Panicale is a jewel of a historic town as so many are in Umbria. You’ve never heard of it just as I’ve never heard of it either until 4 years ago, in spite

Paris does glamour better than anyone. But clearly not at the opera. The Opéra National de Paris at the Bastille still looks like a second-tier suburban cinemaplex and the audience looks accordingly. Opening night has no dress code, no glamour,

Philip Morahan is a British concert pianist. A once-great pianist, lauded by critics and adored by audiences, at 52 he can no longer play the piano. Marooned by performance anxiety, it seems that the sacrifices he has made in the

This is the fifth book by acclaimed Scottish pianist Susan Tomes, and unlike her previous books whose primary focus is on the exigencies of life as a professional musician – from ensemble playing and touring, coughers in the audience to