John Amis online

November 1926 – October 2010 When she first had her singing equipment examined by Ivor Griffiths, famous E.N.T. specialist, he declared he h...

If there were a prize for the most minimal set, it would undoubtedly go to the one seen in Pimlico Opera’s Madame Butterfly seen on Septemb...

In a mere quarter-of-a-century Gaetano Donizetti (1797 – 1848) managed to compose over sixty operas as well as a quantity of church music, s...

The new season at Covent Garden opened on September 10 with a revival of Jonathan Miller's modern clothes 1995 production of Mozart'...

Headine borrowed from the writing of that wonderful humorist, the late Alan Coren. The occasion was a concert given on the last evening of ...

In 1947 Ruth Railton founded the National Youth Orchestra. Many years later the Continent cottoned on to the idea. First, the European You...

WIERD AND WONDERFUL News from the Var Can you imagine anything stranger than a string quartet transcription of Mozart’s Requiem , K. 626? Pe...

If Socrates had been in my seat at Glyndebourne on 18 August it is possible that he might, as was his wont, have wanted to ask a few questio...

Born Melbourne 1913, Australian, but not always proud of it. Latterly added an e to her name( it helped her career somewhat). Brown was a fr...

Richard Strauss once said that he couldn't write about Mozart; he could only worship him but in 1931 he made an edition of one of his go...

Richard Strauss’s last fling at opera was premiered in the dark time in 1942 in Munich, when Germany was in distress and was still causing d...

Covent Garden is on a high forgetting the daft Aida there have been three outright winners in Turco in Italia , La Fille du Regiment and n...

New photograph of John for his 88th birthday.

“Shabby little shocker” was the famous put-down by an American critic, a view not shared by the thousands that enjoy Puccini’s Tosca every ...

Prokofiev was thirty when his opera The Love for Three Oranges was premiered in Chicago at the end of 1931. So it was not the youngest Prkf...

Engaging a director and a set designer to make their operatic débuts at Glyndebourne sounds like folly; and when that opera is as difficult ...

Grandest of the grand Rossini said: “Nobody is capable of writing grand opera except Verdi”: and Aida is the grandest of the lot. Intended ...

Myaskovsky, Copland and Liszt Thats not a bad harvest for the latter half of a single week in London April 29, 30 and May 1, the middle symp...

Somehow the Wigmore Hall atmosphere is always sympathatic during the annual Ferrier Awards, people come every year and there is friendly sup...

Prodigies? Well, there’s Mozart of course, Mendelssohn challenging Shakespeare, Saint-Saéns with 32 sonatas under his pianistic belt, the in...