Given Bernstein’s sheer sweep of the music of Richard Strauss (the ‘Salome’ excerpts are spine-tingling) it’s a pity he didn’t record any more. These precious recordings with Montserrat Caballe, are valuable not only for Bernstein’s advocacy of Strauss on record but also for the Spanish singer’s shimmering interpretations – girl-like in the opera, ravishing in […]

Elena Souliotis, hailed as a successor to Maria Callas, resembled a comet that flashed brightly across the operatic scene and was all too soon extinguished. With a lifelong love of horseriding and the outdoors, she often commented that she preferred animals to people.  She spent much of her childhood in the spectacular garden of her […]

2013 marked the centenary of the first performance of Schoenberg’s – if not the early 20th century’s – essay in gargantuism. The forces involved were unprecedented: in addition to the soloists (soprano, mezzo-soprano, two tenors, bass and speaker) there were three male-voice choirs and an eight-part mixed choir; and the 150-piece orchestra included 25 woodwind, […]