Articles

A Princess Comes Home

Ken Smith explores how ‘Turandot’ became China’s national opera Read more

Living opera

Fort Worth Opera’s Darren K. Woods on setting a new festival agenda. Read more

Rarity Value

Yehuda Shapiro reflects on recent repertoire trends Read more

Der Jahrhundertsänger

John Warrack pays tribute to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau Read more

Twilight of the tickets

Robert Turnbull investigates upheaval at Wagner societies worldwide Read more

Opera’s Poet of Nostalgia

Jack Sullivan explores the operatic life of Frederick Delius Read more

English International

John Berry talks to John Allison about ENO’s co-production policy Read more

That Broadway sound

Roger Pines looks at how vocalism in musical theatre has evolved over the decades Read more

Sparkle restored

George Loomis sees Ruslan and Lyudmila in Moscow’s renovated Bolshoy Theatre Read more

Too Hot for the Bolshoy

It might seem a bit of an exaggeration to claim that a single review could change the course of musical history... Read more

Salvatore Licitra, 1968-2011

The early death (in Catania, on September 5) of Salvatore Licitra has robbed the opera world of one of the best-loved tenors of the post-Pavarotti generation. Read more

Liszt and the opera

In Liszt's bicentenary year, Tim Ashley examines the composer's relationship with opera... Read more

House of the Midnight Sun

Amanda Holloway visits the new-look Icelandic Opera Read more

Emotion of the Moment

Jon Tolansky revisits his last conversation with Jon Vickers Read more

Ildar Abdrazakov

To be young, good-looking and the owner of a fabulous bass voice is a cruel twist of fate. Composers have rarely favoured low voices for their heroes and lovers. Read more

Polish music has probably never been better represented around the world, and yet sadly it is still true to say that most music-lovers would be hard pressed to name more than half a dozen Polish composers and almost certainly no one earlier than Chop Read more

Alberto Zedda

By virtue of the nature of their work, conductors blessed with longevity are able to sustain their careers for much longer than singers or even instrumentalists... Read more

David Syrus celebrate 40 years at the Royal Opera

The Royal Opera’s 1971-2 season, which opened with the Ring conducted by Edward Downes, featured Nilsson as Elektra under Solti... Read more

‘Vissi d’arte’: Angela Gheorghiu talks to Jon Tolansky

Angela Gheorghiu was previously profiled in the March 1999 issue of opera, and at that time her now legendary appearance as Violetta at the Royal Opera House was still a relatively recent wonder... Read more

Boy Wonder

Nico Muhly talks to Kristin Cowdin Read more

Interview with Eva-Maria Westbroek

In a relatively short time, the Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek has established herself as one of the Royal Opera’s most versatile and exciting guest stars... Read more

An imperfect Wagnerite

Rodney Milnes on a stormy on-off love affair Read more

Francesca gets her gun

George Loomis meets Glimmerglass’s new boss, Francesca Zambello Read more

The death of Italian opera

The history of Italian opera is typically drawn as a continuously developing artistic tradition lasting some 300 years, from the early 17th century to Puccini’s Turandot, first performed in 1926... Read more

The Price of perfection

This issue was to have marked Dame Margaret Price’s 70th birthday, which she would have celebrated on April 13. Sadly, she died of a heart attack early on January 28 at home on Ceibwr Bay in Wales... Read more

Rolando Villazón in Lyon

Among his many other non-singing pursuits, Rolando Villazón has become the latest active singer to try his hand at opera directing, which must be one of the only professions in the world these days for which no qualification other than a recognizable Read more

The shock of the new

It was towards the end of 2005, just before the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, that I went to interview the late Charles Mackerras. At home in his elegant house in St John’s Wood, London, the veteran conductor could not have been more eager to Read more

Karita Mattila’s first Emilia Marty

A burst of star power dominated SAN FRANCISCO OPERA’S final fall production. On November 10 Karita Mattila met Emilia Marty for the first time in her career in a new production of Janáèek’s Makropoulos Case... Read more

Toulouse

Encapsulating all the creative differences that were soon to terminate the Brecht-Weill collaboration, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny is a work that positively invites directors and conductors to take different aesthetic sides. Read more

Shirley Verrett, 1931-2010

In 1968 RCA released ‘Shirley Verrett in Opera’, a mix of French and Italian repertoire, much of it unfamiliar and all of it gloriously sung. The disc opened with the heroic bravura aria of Gluck’s Orphée (in the version reworked by Berlioz for Viard Read more