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Haydn’s ‘Representation of Chaos’ from The Creation was a fitting opener, presenting as it does both mysterious obscurity - what Charles Burney described as ‘organised confusion’ - and the explosive brilliance of the birth of Light. Here, sharply defined woodwind...

Thank heaven for seniority. As a 28-year-old teacher of choral music in Winnipeg, Gregory Dahl did not have any. Which meant he was among the first to be laid off when the high school at which he worked decided to downsize. “I had this epiphany,” the baritone said...

The previous winners were mezzo-soprano Anna Starushkevych (2013) and soprano Galina Averina (2015). Bampton Classical Opera has a reputation for its commitment to young talent and a number of singers who have appeared on the Bampton stage have gone on to work with...

"Opera singers come in all shapes, sizes and ages," says soprano Simone Osborne. "We wear jeans, drink coffee, take our dogs for walks, have normal families and lives (outside the theatre), just like everyone else. You have probably shared a subway or streetcar ride...

The following evening, on Friday 6 October, IO presented its inaugural Voice Scholars’ recital, its response to the needs of the artists it has supported since 2005. Recognising the importance of professional experience as well as training, IO’s five 2016-17 Voice...

Romeo and Juliet, Rinaldo and Armida, Ramadès and Aida: love thwarted by warring countries and families is a perennial trope of literature, myth and history. Indeed, ‘Love and war are all one,’ declared Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote, a sentiment which seems to be...

Noa Wildschut, Mozart Yoram Ish-Hurwitz, Gordan Nikolić, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra Warner I’m about to break an iron rule and review a kid playing the violin. And, no, I haven’t given in to peer pressure, though there has been plenty of it from the London agency...

It began ‘with a purely obscene fancy of a Missionary in difficulties’. So E.M. Forster wrote to Siegfried Sassoon in August 1923, of his short story ‘The Life to Come’ - the title story of a collection that was not published until 1972, two years after Forster’s...