Geneva is an unusual place. Set on a stunning lake at the Swiss-French border and surrounded by hulking dark mountains, its city center is dominated by banks and jewellers. Hotels and restaurants are notoriously overpriced, as is pretty much everything

Vancouver Opera is the distinguished and well-liked company founded in 1958 by a group of visionary community leaders. They believed in the value of the performing arts in the life of a great city in Canada. Each year, it has

The sense of achievement at this Götterdämmerung was palpable. The Hong Kong Philharmonic has now completed, over four years, a full Wagner Ring Cycle. It is fair to say that what started as a very competent sounding orchestra in 2015

In her recent recording for La Dolce Volta, pianist Vanessa Wagner played a piano recital of the music of one 18th century and one early 19th century masters: W.A. Mozart (1756-1791) and Muzio Clementi (1752-1832). She played the recital on

When the Royal Opera House premièred Katie Mitchell’s production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in spring 2016, the management posted numerous warnings about the on-stage sex and violence. Few contemporary directors, not even the provocative exponents of the more ambitious

Salzburg doesn’t fear difficult opera. And Alban Berg’s Wozzeck certainly qualifies as one. Infrequently performed on more conventional stages because of the inaccessible music and distressing storyline, Salzburg embraced it wholeheartedly, both musically and visually.

The Salzburg music festival’s new director Markus Hinterhaeuser boldly outlined the motto of this year’s program as ‘power’: “strategies of power, its disgraces and horrors, but also with the ability to forgive.” With this bold declaration Hinterhaeuser possibly tried to

There was little to commend the new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Aix-en-Provence Festival 2017. The stage set lacked any recognizable theme, and the intermittently raised and dropped metallic curtains offered no discernible purpose. Ditto on the costumes