Ludwig van Beethoven is the undisputed master of the symphony. It was always the great ambition of his life, however, to compose opera. Opera was not only a high-status genre, it was big business, and ...

Condensing Melville’s vast and discursive work into a three-hour opera may have seemed as foolish as Captain Ahab’s increasingly desperate voyage to find the whale that maimed him, but Heggie and ...

If you believe musical performance fundamentally is an expression of freedom, then “Fidelio,” Ludwig van Beethoven’s only opera, is your über text. The famed work is now at Lyric Opera of Chicago with ...

On paper, director Tobias Kratzer’s rationale for his production of Beethoven’s Fidelio made persuasive sense. He started from the premise that Beethoven set his story in Spain because the censors ...

As part of our daily series Armchair Arts, Rupert Christiansen guides you through Ludwig van Beethoven’s 1814 opera Fidelio Rupert Christiansen was the opera critic and arts features writer for The ...

It is always a great pleasure to zip down the M40 to the glorious Wormsley Estate, the setting for Garsington Opera. With glorious weather, red kites wheeling in the sky and an opera house that feels ...