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Classical music & opera

  • Authority and purpose … Yulianna Avdeeva.

    Album of the week
    Chopin: Voyage album – clarity and sincerity but Avdeeva keeps us at arm’s length

  • Sinéad Campbell-Wallace, Christine Rice, ENO’s Suor Angelica 2024, Rehearsal Images © Zoe Martin

    Opera
    Suor Angelica: Why the tragedy of Puccini’s ‘imaginary’ nun feels all too real

    Puccini set his one-act opera in the 17th century, but its tragic story has had many painfully real counterparts all too recently, says ENO’s Annilese Miskimmon
  • Kristina Mkhitaryan (Tatyana), Gordon Bintner (Eugene Onegin), Liparit Avetisyan (Lensky) in Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky. A Royal Ballet & Opera production @ ROH. Directed by Ted Huffman. Conducted by Henrik Nánási. (Press night 24-09-2024) ©Tristram Kenton 09-24 (3 Raveley Street, LONDON NW5 2HX TEL 0207 267 5550 Mob 07973 617 355)email: tristram@tristramkenton.com

    Opera
    ‘It is so painful to know that people pity me’: Tchaikovsky, unrequited love and me

    Tormented by a sexuality he could never openly express, the composer poured his anguish into his opera Eugene Onegin. As a new production hits the stage, its director reveals why it speaks to his own impossible romance
  • Peter Hoare (Faust) and Christopher Purves (Mephistopheles) in Terry Gilliam’s staging of Berlio’z The Damnation of Faust at English National Opera 2011.

    Feature
    The devil has all the best tunes: the musical life of Goethe’s Faust

  • Beethoven for Three – Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma at the 2024 Proms.

    Proms 2024
    ‘Thrilling, unforgettable … there is nothing else like it!’: readers on their Proms highlights

  • Volunteers celebrate the launch of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture: they are lined up and cheering behind large white letters spelling out the city's name, and wear black T-shirts with a B shaped to look like a heart. They are standing in a large paved plaza in front of a large, historic stone building

    News
    ‘The UK is invited’: Bradford reveals 2025 City of Culture lineup

  • George Benjamin

    Album review
    Benjamin/Crimp: Picture a day like this – jewel-like precision

Live reviews

  • A member of Sequenza 9.3 performing at the Biennale Musica in Venice.

    The week in classical: Biennale Musica; Scottish Ensemble; Paraorchestra: Symphony of Sorrowful Songs – review

  • Piotr Anderszewski, at The Barbican in Barbican, London 03/10/24 Photographer Sonja Horsman

    Piotr Anderszewski review – exceptional, even by his meticulous standards

  • Stephen Hough with the Philharmonia, conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali, at the Royal Festival Hall.

    Philharmonia/Rouvali review – epic Nordic soundscapes of drama and disruption

  • Msimelelo Mbali (Sarastro) and Claire Lees (Pamina) in Opera North’s The Magic Flute.

    The Magic Flute review – Opera North inject colour into Mozart’s black-and-white world

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Album reviews

  • A flexible soprano soloist … conductor Barbara Hannigan and singer Alexandra Heath during recording.

    Stravinsky: Chamber Works album review – Juilliard and Royal Academy of Music offers much of interest

  • Jonas Kaufmann looking as handsome as ever

    Jonas Kaufmann: Puccini: Love Affairs review – will delight fans

  • Day and night … Jakub Hrůša and Kateřina Kněžíková

    Tag und Nacht: Strauss Songs album review – music for soprano is brisk, bright and light on its feet

  • Stylish … John Wilson conducts Sinfonia of London

    Rodgers and Hammerstein: Carousel album review – welcome return from Broadway band of dreams

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

People

  • Roderick Williams sitting on a bench.

    Q&A
    Baritone Roderick Williams: ‘I once heard a singer at a party say: “No peanuts. I’m singing in three days!”’

  • Jakub Jozef Orlinski at Warner Music Uk, South Kensington, London, for Q&A New Review, 26/06/2024. Sophia Evans for The Observer

    Q&A
    Countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński: ‘Breakdancing feeds into my performances – music dictates the way you move on stage’

  • Roger Wright, CEO of Britten Pears Arts

    ‘I’ve always been a glass half full person’
    Aldeburgh festival’s outgoing CEO Roger Wright

  • Jerrold Northrop Moore began his Elgar researches as a student by interviewing people who had known the composer.

    Obituary
    Jerrold Northrop Moore

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

You may have missed

  • Antonio Vivaldi.

    Feature
    Vivaldi taught Venetian orphan girls – did they help write his music in return?

  • People seemed to be conscious, judging from strawberries consumed … Glastonbury 2024.

    Radio 3's Georgia Mann
    I’ll take your brain to another dimension … my classical DJ set at Glastonbury

  • Backstage during dress rehearsals

    The Guardian picture essay
    Love, laughs and lavish designs: The Merry Widow at Glyndebourne

  • ‘Our first time’ … Gemma New will conduct the world premiere of City of Floating Sounds.

    In the key of 5G
    The ‘dimensionalist’ who wrote a symphony for 1,000 phones

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Guides

  • 1216 Portrait of Ethel Smyth<br>PBBHMT 1216 Portrait of Ethel Smyth

    Know the score
    Without Ethel Smyth and classical music's forgotten women, we only tell half the story

    Leah Broad
  • From left: The Tempest, The Minotaur, L’amour de loin, Hamlet

    The best classical music works of the 21st century

  • A guide to contemporary classical music

  • Fireworks light the sky above the Brandenburg Gate shortly after midnight in Berlin, Friday, Jan. 1, 2016. Hundred of thousands of people gathered for the New Year celebrations, welcoming the new year 2016 at the area around the Brandenburg Gate in the capital of Germany. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

    A musical tour of Europe
    Stephen Moss's guide to the music of Europe's great cities: Berlin

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

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