baroque music
Meet the unrivalled Sun King of early music, William Christie
It’s morning in the garden of William Christie, and he’s talking about home improvements. ‘I planted three pines up there…
ENO’s Jack the Ripper needs to decide if it wants to be a gore-fest or social history
Is it possible to write a feminist opera about Jack the Ripper? Composer Iain Bell thinks it is, and his…
Real psychological horror and a mesmerising heroine: ENO’s Lucia di Lammermoor reviewed
How do you solve a problem like Lucia? Murder, madness, abuse, possibly even incest, all set to a soundtrack of…
A fun evening that finished early enough for dinner – neither a given in Handel
On a sward of AstroTurf somewhere off Silicon Roundabout, Mountain Media is hosting its summer party and, well, it’s the…
I don’t get why people worship Bach
I don’t get Johann Sebastian Bach. I mean, I get that he was good — no Mozart, sure, but definitely…
Time to end authenticity
They say the first step towards recovery is admitting that you have a problem. So I’m staging an intervention and…
Does the great Bach conductor Masaaki Suzuki think his audience will burn in hell?
Damian Thompson talks to the great Bach conductor — and strict Calvinist — Masaaki Suzuki
Can this year’s Gesualdo celebrations be about the music rather than the blood and gore?
The allure of Carlo Gesualdo, eighth Count of Conza and third Prince of Venosa, has been felt by music-lovers from…
Has there ever been a better time to be a lover of Baroque opera?
Time was when early music was a 6 p.m. concert, Baroque began with Bach and ended with Corelli’s Christmas Concerto,…
The Baroque composer who was a world music pioneer
On Private Passions this week the writer Amitav Ghosh gave us a refreshingly different version of what has become a…
Four of the best albums to write books by
I have been writing a book this summer, in the usual mad tearing hurry. (Much as I admire those who…
Alice in Wonderland at the Barbican reviewed: too much miaowing
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson loved little girls. He loved to tell them stories, he loved to feed them jam, he loved…
Does anyone have the balls to bring back castrati?
One of the most complete bars to the authentic performance of both baroque opera and some renaissance polyphony is the…
