Sometimes a composer becomes so well known for a particular genre of music that other pieces go unrecognized. The following are three examples of composers who are famous for one thing but who ...

This week we turn to the Shakespeare of opera, a composer whose glorious gift for melodies and compassionate gaze celebrates life in all its variety Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) is one of the greatest ...

Verdi imagined each of his operas painted with a different tincture. Conductor Riccardo Chailly puts together an exciting new album of Verdi's choruses, from his best known to his most obscure. This ...

La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny) is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino (1835), ...

This reissue of Sir Georg Solti’s 1989 recording of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra is part of a series on Decca Classics entitled ‘Classic Opera’. I’m not quite sure why it’s called this, however. Certain ...

This performance of the work which Verdi wrote in memory of Alessandro Manzoni, whom he called “this great spirit,” was a fitting choice not only as the culmination of the Ryedale Festival but in ...

Rigoletto is the kind of opera that, even if you staged it in a darkened storage locker, would still feel incandescent. The Metropolitan Opera has taken the opposite approach, tricking out its new ...

The evening was dedicated – on the 10th anniversary of this death – to Claudio Abbado’s contribution to Santa Cecilia over 26 seasons of the fifty he was active, though none of his performances here ...

Say what you will about the demise of the CD and the battles between downloads and streams, in 2015 the flow of classical music recordings seemed as full and rich as ever. Devising a list of just 10 ...