John Amis online

THE REST IS NOISE Listening to the Twentieth Century Alex Ross Pp 624 Fourth Estate £20 This book is well worth the money – the best survey ...

Did you know that Darcey Bussell could speak lines? Or that Kathleen Jenkins could dance? Pop along to your local arena then, and find out f...

March 30 in the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, had the first performance of Edward Harper’s re-orchestration of Alan Rawsthorne’s cantata Kub...

Sir Colin Davis has been celebrating his 80th birthday in style, conducting Berlioz with the French National Orchestra, Gerontius in Boston...

Which opera by Richard Strauss has a text by Hoffmannsthal, a big soprano monologue to end act one, an important transvestite role and waltz...

Enter a scruffy maestro, Nigel Kennedy himself, him wiv the bovver left boots, tassels a-dangling. He carries his violin in the left hand, ...

It was probably Donizetti's librettist who made Lord Henry Ashton the villain who wrongs Lucia di Lammermoor, instead of Walter Scott...

WHY do we call afternoon shows matinees ? Probably too late to change it now; but wouldn't apres-midiens be more accurate? Anyway I went...

Political correctness forced Robertsons to remove from their jams the charming gollywog logo. But The Mikado , the most successful of all th...

Sandor Vegh in Cornwall: the Hungarian Virtuoso Violinist and the founding of the International Musicians Seminar Prussia Cove. By Hilary Tu...

An evening with this title was given on January 22. It was a curate's egg affair. Good were the filmed tributes from Zubin Menta the con...

When Britten announced that he was going to write an all-male opera we thought he was barking mad (just as we did when he said he was writin...

I saw the last performance in the present Covent Garden run of Wagner's Parsifal and it was probably the last time that Sir John Tomlin...

So, farewell, Menanem Pressler, farewell Beaux Arts Trio, you gave the musical world supreme enjoyment with. your performances of a thorough...

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is twenty-one and celebrated on June 30 with a mammoth concert in the Royal Festival Hall. It bega...

There were several threads weaving through the life of Benjamin Britten: on, more like a hawser than a thread perhaps, was the defence of hi...

Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande is a sport. True, Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov is an influence with its naturalistic setting of langua...

"Where's your favourite opera venue?' an acquaintaince asked last Monday. Looking out over rolling Hampshire fields and country...

There are stars in our musical firmament, usually preeminent in one sphere, but occasionally, perhaps once a century, along comes a megastar...

Not long ago there was an Indian girl called Wasfi Kani. She was a conductor who ran a chamber opera company called Pimlico . A compassiona...