On the occasion of the recent wedding of Louis XV and Maria Leszczyńska, daughter of the deposed king of Poland, the Hamburg Opera am Gänsemarkt saw the premiere of Georg Philipp Telemann’s intermezzos Pimpinone on 27 September 1725. The Telemann

Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959), the younger compatriot of Czech composer Leoš Janáček (1854–1928), was much more widely traveled than Janáček, largely due to the wars of the 20th century. Martinů, living in Paris in 1940, emigrated temporarily to Portugal and then

In my previous article about the Leeds Piano Competition in 2021, I insinuated some evidence of an “old boys club”, as there were 5 men selected to advance to the finals out of 10 semi-finalists comprising 4 women and 6

Béla Bartók was diagnosed with Leukaemia in April 1944, and as his body gradually failed, he found creative energy and produced a final set of masterpieces inspired by Yehudi Menuhin, Fritz Reiner, and Serge Koussevitzky. Bartók died at age 64,

You’ve probably never heard of the charcoal merchant Thomas Britton (1644-1714). He came from a small village in Northamptonshire and moved to London to become a highly successful merchant. In his spare time, he started to take singing lessons and

In 1575, Torquato Tasso wrote his epic poem Gerusalemme liberate (Jerusalem Delivered). Set during the first crusade, the sorceress Armida ensnares the Christian knight Rinaldo and holds him captive on an island. When she raises her dagger to kill him,

For some listeners and critics, Henryk Szeryng’s “steely tenacity and intellectual firepower lurked just behind the gracious surfaces.” However, as pianist Arthur Rubinstein famously stated, “Szeryng’s playing reduce me to tears… Real music lovers want emotion, great moments, which Szeryng’s

Castration for musical reasons was never really officially legal. In fact, it was banned under Canon Law and punishable with excommunication. The music historian Charles Burney traveled through Italy in search of places where the operation was carried out. He