Teatro “Cesare Caporali” sits in Panicale Umbria. Panicale is a jewel of a historic town as so many are in Umbria. You’ve never heard of it just as I’ve never heard of it either until 4 years ago, in spite

Paris does glamour better than anyone. But clearly not at the opera. The Opéra National de Paris at the Bastille still looks like a second-tier suburban cinemaplex and the audience looks accordingly. Opening night has no dress code, no glamour,

Philip Morahan is a British concert pianist. A once-great pianist, lauded by critics and adored by audiences, at 52 he can no longer play the piano. Marooned by performance anxiety, it seems that the sacrifices he has made in the

This is the fifth book by acclaimed Scottish pianist Susan Tomes, and unlike her previous books whose primary focus is on the exigencies of life as a professional musician – from ensemble playing and touring, coughers in the audience to

This summer’s Salzburg Festival chatter was dominated by the enthusiastic reviews of the new production of Richard Strauss’ Salome and its new star soprano Asmik Grigorian.

Madrid pulled together an absolute dream production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, with a cast few houses could even think about. This production by David Alden, first commissioned for the English National Opera in 2008, sets the scene in

Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, the opera company based in the Western section of the formerly divided city, put on grand opera at its most opulent with Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Gioconda. Rarely performed these days due to the work’s staggering length, large

Humphrey Burton made his first connection with Leonard Bernstein when Bernstein came over to London for the premiere of Candide. It had opened to disappointing reviews in New York three years earlier and the only part of the work that