Set against the backdrop of the magical White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg, SACRED STAGE features the best in Russian symphonic music, ballet and opera at Russia’s premier theatre - the Mariinsky, also known as the Kirov. SACRED STAGE explores…

The best way to get through the streets of the metropolis of Mexico City is with one of the famous green Volkswagen Beetle Taxis. In this city of 18 million people, Tenor Rolando Villazón was born. With a look somewhere between latin lover and Mr…

There’s no question about it - this man is annoyed. His violin bow swooshes through the air like a saber. Again and again, the final bar of the famous E Major Partita for Solo Violin fills the empty baroque church in Lockenhaus. Gidon Kremer has…

In March of 2004, the Royal Opera Covent Garden in London cancelled its contract with Deborah Voigt. The official reason given by the casting director: too fat. The opera world was outraged. Since when can't opera singers be overweight? Since Callas…

In their new series EuroArts presents audio-visual concert guides to masterpieces of classical music. The guides allow listeners to experience and enjoy great music from the Baroque to the present day in an entirely new way by offering a combination…

The Symphony No. 5 in E minor by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was composed between May and August 1888. It was first performed, under Tchaikovsky's own baton, in St Petersburg on November 6, 1888. While composing the symphony, Tchaikovsky constantly…

The Alpine Symphony is one of Strauss’ largest non-operatic conceptions, and the composer himself considered it his best-wrought work in terms of its orchestration. Despite its title, it is not a symphony in the generally accepted sense of the word…

Berlioz’ “Fantastic Symphony” is widely regarded as one of the most important and representative pieces of the early Romantic period. Leonard Bernstein once called it “the first musical expedition into psychedelia” because of its hallucinatory and…

The story of Caffé Taci, downtown Manhattan: the craziest place in the opera universe, with diamond dealers, losers, up-and-coming singers, opera stars like René Pape, an-85-year-old Russian pianist, aficionados, agents and bohemians. Life is a big…

“Aggressive, nasty and violent. That’s us: Estonians.” This is Anu Tali´s warning on her first meeting with the Munich Chamber Orchestra. For her debut, the Estonian conductor has put together a very Baltic programme: Peteris Vasks´ violin concerto…