Meet Opera Australia’s new Figaro, the Italian bass baritone who’s turning ‘buffo’ into a total art form. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

With opera companies more and more regularly dazzled by the lights of Broadway, we investigate the seemingly irresistible rise of musical theatre.

Or do we ever allow ourselves space to let our senses enjoy?

Joyce El-Khoury on being thrown to Donizetti’s lions. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Baroque specialist, harpsichordist and pioneering conductor of Handel opera passes at 80.

We get to the bottom of the quirky British vocal ensemble and its ‘beany’ Italian name.

★★★★★ Donizetti was one of the most prolific opera composers of all time, an appealingly personable fellow (if you read the letters), and an extraordinary professional capable of turning out a work in just a few weeks. That very facility though has led to a general dismissal of his music as too easy, rushed, derivative, or worse. Les Martyrs disproves all of these. A late work (1840), this grandest of his French grand operas was written simultaneously with the slighter, yet inexplicably more popular La Fille du Régiment, but the two works couldn’t be more different – one a trivially sucrose French confection, the other a profound meditation on faith and duty. But while Daughter of the Regiment went on to conquer the world, Les Martyrs sank without a trace. That latter statement isn’t entirely true. Les Martyrs was itself an expanded reworking of Poliuto, an opera Donizetti had written for Naples that fell foul of the censors and so never made it to the stage. Poliuto has been championed intermittently over the years (there’s a superb live version with Callas, Corelli and Bastianini) and Glyndebourne have just given its British premiere, but Les Martyrs is a horse of a…

Lady Rattle talks about growing up Czech, managing diaries and bringing up a musical family.

Trio of great performances help four hours of passion and politics fly by.

From Scriabin to Chopin, Wang dazzles with poetry, musicianship and bags of ‘wow’ factor.

The 66-year-old Italian bass talks to Limelight about Kings, Christoff, Karajan and the secret of vocal longevity. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The mighty Canadian tenor who redefined Peter Grimes passes at 88.