Before she ingloriously lost her head, Marie-Antoinette reigned over music in France in the Age of Enlightenment for nearly twenty years. She invited and actively supported foreign composers, and simultaneously fostered the great tragédie lyrique of Gluck alongside the opéa

A New Year’s Eve tradition in the opera world is Johann Strauss II’s operetta Die Fledermaus (The Bat). A year earlier, Eisenstein abandoned his friend Falke in center of town, drunken and dressed as a bat (hence the title), and

In April 1817, a merry little band of artists decided to form a small private club called the “Unsinnsgesellschaft” (Nonsense Society). Based in Vienna, this congenial group of artistic friends published a weekly magazine, the “Archiv des menschlichen Unsinns” (Archive

From its first notes, Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker takes us to someplace warm and magical. Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker, Op. 71: Overture (Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; Simon Rattle, cond.) The ballet originates in a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Nutcracker and the

The tale of the two children and how they fool the wicked witch who has captured them in her gingerbread house has become a holiday opera. The recasting of the Grimm Brother’s tale into something more family friendly was done

For primarily political reasons, the music of Dmitri Kabalevsky never really enjoyed great popularity in the West. Despite writing in a readily accessible musical style that was primarily rooted in folk music, his name was listed in the infamous 1948

“Minors of the Majors” invites you to discover compositions by the great classical composers that for one reason or another have not reached the musical mainstream. Please enjoy, and keep listening!

He wrote some of the most beautiful and inspiring Christmas music ever! Yet as a practicing church musician Johann Sebastian Bach had very little time to celebrate the Christmas season. When Bach signed the contract for the post at St.