baroque music
Meet the unrivalled Sun King of early music, William Christie
Richard Bratby is granted an audience with the feisty master of early music William Christie, who’s celebrating 40 years with Les Arts Florissants
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 ditch authenticity for early music Proms
They say the first step towards recovery is admitting that you have a problem. So I’m staging an intervention and…
Shattering climaxes and showstopping singing: Glyndebourne’s Hamlet reviewed
Brett Dean’s new opera for Glyndebourne is a big-hearted romantic comedy, sunny and life-affirming. Only joking — this is contemporary…
First-rate musical performance & production: Garsington’s Semele reviewed
Handel’s Semele, one of the most enjoyable operas (or opera-oratorio, if you insist) in the repertoire, is, in its upshot,…
Harpsichordists at war
Harpsichordists are supposed to make love, not war: Sir Thomas Beecham famously compared the sound they make to ‘two skeletons…
Bach at its most bruising and gruff: Kyung Wha Chung at St George’s, Bristol, reviewed
Coined in 1944, ‘completism’ is a modern term for a modern-day obsession. What began as a phenomenon of possession —…
Luther’s music had an even greater impact than his words
It’s 500 years since Martin Luther pinned his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, sparking…
A marvellous occasion – but could it not have been pruned? Il ritorno d’Ulisse reviewed
Monteverdi 450 — the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists’ tour of his three operas to 33 cities across two…
This is how you reimagine Bach’s St John Passion
‘The dripping blood our only drink/ The bloody flesh our only food…/ Again, in spite of that, we call this…
A ravishing Rameau premiere – pity the choreography was pure Bez
The English weren’t the first cowpat composers. Jean-Philippe Rameau raised the art of frolicking in the fields to such heights…
Denial has rarely looked so good: ENO’s Partenope reviewed
Ceci n’est pas une Partenope. Forget the warring classical kingdoms of Naples and Cumae: this is surrealist Paris in the…
The true radical genius of Monteverdi is not in the operas but in the madrigals
On his 450th anniversary, Alexandra Coghlan celebrates the composer’s remarkable musical prescience
The thrills are in the visuals: Philip Glass’s Les Enfants Terribles reviewed
Kids: who’d have them? Certainly no one who has ever been to the opera. If they’re not murdering you, they’re…
Performing the Goldberg Variations on the piano involves too many compromises
The churning, rheumatic mechanism of a harpsichord — notes needling your ears like drops of acid rain — doesn’t necessarily…
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…
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