After seven fulfilling years at the helm of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko has extended his contract, his tenure, his commitment, as he puts it, “to eternity”. Another decade in Liverpool is guaranteed taking him…

In 2007 the English tenor, Ian Storey, made a dramatic and highly visible debut as Tristan in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the season opening of La Scala, Milan, conducted by Daniel Barenboim and directed by Patrice Chereau. It…

The 36th Dresden Music Festival has a big title and even bigger ambitions – EMPIRE – a theme which Artistic Director Jan Vogler hopes will embrace not just the cultural achievements of the British Empire but the…

Vasily Petrenko’s highly acclaimed cycle of the Shostakovich Symphonies with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra reaches an important chapter in what Petrenko himself calls a “biopic” of the composer’s life and times. The 7th Symphony “Leningrad” chronicles…

The place is the elegant One Aldwych hotel and in a suite kindly provided by the management Broadway star Betty Buckley is in post workout mode chatting to Edward Seckerson about her return to the London stage…

Not many singers could entitle a recital album The Beautiful Voice and ensure that in every sense it lived up to its name. Renée Fleming’s now iconic album is shortly to have a successor and in this…

Backstage at English National Opera, David McVicar & Sarah Connolly discuss Charpentier’s Medea. It is Wednesday 6 February and just prior to the afternoon stage rehearsal at the London Coliseum I sit down with David McVicar and Sarah…

Sir John Eliot Gardiner dislikes being branded a “Baroque specialist” and with a discography exceeding 250 recordings and embracing a bewildering diversity of repertoire one can understand why. From Monteverdi to The Merry Widow he is and…

Fresh from four cycles of Wagner’s Ring at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and a run of performances in one of his signature roles – Wagner’s Flying Dutchman – the great Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel was…

Backstage at English National Opera, Edward Seckerson meets Corinne Winters – Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata. Peter Konwitschny’s highly filmic new staging of Verdi’s La Traviata is now an opera in four “pictures”: no interval, no grandstanding finales – not…