Who’s in, who’s out?
From Ladybird’s The Story of Music (a dinky 50 pages, generously illustrated) to Richard Taruskin’s five-volume epic The Oxford History…
Bach’s Cello Suites represent a spiritual meditation — from the Nativity to the Resurrection
‘One player on four strings, with a bow.’ That’s what Bach’s six Cello Suites boil down to, says Steven Isserlis.…
The finest Falstaff you’ll see this summer
Comedy’s a funny thing. No, seriously, the business of making people laugh is as fragile, as mercurial as cryptocurrency —…
You'll shrug where you should marvel: Garsington's Amadigi reviewed
When you think of Handel’s Amadigi (in so far as anyone thinks about the composer’s rarely staged, also-ran London score…
Josquin changed musical history – why don't we hear more of him?
Stepping into the Sistine Chapel, the choir loft is probably the last thing you’d notice. ‘Loft’ is, frankly, a stretch…
Where to start with the music of Ethel Smyth
I’m reminded of an old Irish joke. A tourist approaches a local for directions to Dublin. The local, after much…
Astonishing, relentlessly pleasurable rediscovery – tantric opera: Luigi Rossi's Il Palazzo incantato reviewed
I don’t say this lightly, but after 20 years of opera-going, Luigi Rossi’s Il Palazzo incantato might just be the…
From ancient Greece to TikTok: a short history of the sea shanty
From ancient Greece to TikTok: Alexandra Coghlan on the pulling power of shanties
Another cracking take on the opera film: Marquee TV’s Turn of the Screw reviewed
I’m still waiting for the Royal Opera to step up. Nearly a year into the Covid crisis and what do…
How we became a nation of choirs and carollers
Alexandra Coghlan on how we became a nation of choirs and carollers
A coherent evening of real opera: GSMD's Triple Bill reviewed
Covid has been many things to the arts — most of them unprintable. A plague, a scourge, a disaster from…
Unobtrusively filmed, powerfully performed but still unsatisfying: LSO's Bluebeard reviewed
The timing couldn’t be better. Just as the gates clang shut on another national lockdown, trapping us all indefinitely with…
I don’t know when I’ve been more moved: Ora Singers at Tate Modern reviewed
It’s the breath I miss most. The moment when a shuffling group of men and women in scruffy concert blacks…
If we stop idolising Beethoven we might understand him better
Ludwig von Beethoven belongs among those men whom not only Vienna and Germany, but Europe and our entire age revere.…
After weeks of silence, Royal Opera reopened with a whimper
It was the fourth time, or maybe the fifth, that I found myself reaching for the tissues that I began…
The best recordings of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges
‘I don’t want to do my work. I want to go for a walk. I want to eat all the…
No one understood the ennui of lockdown better than Louis XIV and his courtiers
A few years ago I interviewed an eminent baroque conductor. Prickly and professorial, tired after a day of rehearsals, he…
Why we love requiems
Alexandra Coghlan on the enduring appeal of requiems
The best recordings of my favourite Passion
In the autumn of 1632, a man called Kaspar Schisler returned home to the small Bavarian town of Oberammergau. He…
The musical vaccination we all need against the bleak times ahead: ETO’s Cosi fan tutte reviewed
Anyone familiar with Joe Hill-Gibbins’s work will brace instinctively when the curtain goes up on his new Figaro. He’s the…
A lost opera from the most powerful musician you’ve never heard of: La ville morte reviewed
Who was the most influential figure in 20th-century classical music? Stravinsky? Pierre Boulez? What about Bernstein or Britten? John Cage…
One hell of a concert: Opera North’s Bluebeard’s Castle reviewed
Freud knew something about fear. Not the sudden shock of terror, but the creeping, sickening, slow-burn horror of the uncanny.…
Handsome and revivable but I wasn’t moved: Royal Opera’s Death in Venice reviewed
Premièred within two years of each other, Luchino Visconti’s film and Benjamin Britten’s opera Death in Venice both take Thomas…
Joyce DiDonato seduces you within the first 10 minutes: Royal Opera’s Agrippina reviewed
‘Laws bow down before the desire to rule…’ Centuries before ‘proroguing’ had entered British breakfast-table vocabulary there was Handel’s Agrippina,…
More Grace Kelly than Grace Jones: Welsh National Opera’s Carmen reviewed
How do you take your Carmen? Sun-drenched exotic fantasy with a side order of castanets, or cool and gritty, sour…
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