classical music & opera
-
With its story of rapes, murder, fine wines and fancy dress, Don Giovanni offers plenty for directors to get their teeth into. The results might not be coherent and they might well be controversial, but they are almost always colourful.
-
As part of celebrations for the composer’s 80th birthday, a unique performance of Steve Reich’s piece about transport during the Holocaust took place at a train station
-
The Philharmonia’s principal conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen wants you to join his virtual symphony orchestra. He talks VR and the future of concertgoing
-
A new play tells the story of Kathleen Ferrier, using the singers’ own letters and diaries. Lucy Stevens explains how she brought a down-to-earth icon to the stage
-
Berio’s Mahler-based Sinfonia and arrangements of Mahler’s songs create a satisfying double bill ably performed by Josep Pons and Matthias Goerne
-
Sibelius’s first public appearance in England, conducting his symphony no 1, and Finlandia
facing the music
-
The tenor loves the Beatles, gets cosy to Nat King Cole and would have loved to sing with von Karajan
-
Opera North’s music director on wishing he was a fly on the wall to see Wagner compose, why MP3 players are spoiling us for live music and his would-be career as a sci-fi author
-
-
At 73, the conductor is still lobbying presidents and bellowing at the violins in five languages. But has his passion project – an orchestra of players from across the Middle East – achieved any real change? We meet him in Buenos Aires
-
In the fourth in our series, we look at the Finnish capital and its music
-
you may have missed
-
Losing one voice helped Sally Beamish find another. Two decades later she has come full circle. She tells how her daughter, her mentor Peter Maxwell Davies – and a blackbird – have inspired her new work, and her own return to playing
-
What’s it like to play a cello concerto written by your brother? To conduct your wife? To sing alongside your daughter? Michael Hann meets the classical musicians who are keeping it all in the family this Proms season
-
Exquisite harmonies, by candlelight, transported audiences in 1600s London out of filthy streets into a gilded world of kings and star-cross’d lovers. Composer-director Claire van Kampen explains why music was a key factor in the Bard’s success
-
Adès’s macabre, fabulously inventive take on Buñuel’s film felt like a turning point for the composer – and for opera itself
guides
-
Tom Service's survey of the 50 symphonies that changed classical music
-
Tom Service introduces 50 composers from the contemporary classical music scene
-
popular
Topics
- All today's stories
- Opera
- Proms 2016
- Festivals
- Proms
- English National Opera (ENO)
- Royal Opera House
- William Shakespeare
- BBC
- Welsh National Opera
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- World music
- Jazz
- The Philharmonia Orchestra
- Choral music
- BBC Symphony Orchestra
- Radio industry
- Radio 3
- Music festivals
- Esa-Pekka Salonen
- Steve Reich
First night Don Giovanni, ENO – Richard Jones takes us far from Mozart with touches of brilliance and BDSM