It sits on the right bank of the Seine in Paris’ 1st arrondissement and was built on the orders of Napoleon III’s chief architect, Baron Haussmann. The Théâtre du Châtelet towers above the busy Place du Châtelet, directly opposite its

Picasso’s 1937 oil painting Guernica is considered one of the ‘most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history.’ The work is enormous, standing 3.49 meters (11 ft 5 in) tall and 7.76 meters (25 ft 6 in) across. The picture

How Smetana Established the “Czechness” in His Opera The Bartered Bride is a comic opera with three acts completed in 1866. It was written by Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) with libretto by Karel Sabina (1813-1877).1 The first performance was held at

Symphony orchestras perform some of the greatest music ever created by mankind. Nonetheless, negative labels have been hurled at these bastions of classical music, accusations such as—they’re like an albatross, slow to embrace change; they uphold antiquated traditions and formats;

Only months after the horrendous atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Swiss playwright and novelist Max Frisch (1911-91) penned his theatrical play “The Chinese Wall.” It is in equal parts tragedy, comedy, history and satire that address the possibility

Anna Netrebko, one of today’s best-known sopranos has never shied away from speaking her mind. When she was asked about allegations of sexual assault against high profile conductors, including James Levine and Charles Dutoit, she publically stated “Any of this

Conductors are the only musical performers that do not produce sound. Rather, they operate at the tip of a long chain of non-verbal communication from the composer to the audience. But conductors are hardly silent. Since conducting has always been

While it has been fashionable to separate the art from the artist—just think of Caravaggio, Woody Allen, Benjamin Britten, Richard Wagner and countless others—music and politics have always been intricately connected and entwined. As the great Isaac Stern famously said,