The evolution of the solo percussionist has advanced dramatically over the last couple of decades and among the superstars of the hardware that can be struck and pounded or caressed and stroked is the flying Scotsman Colin Currie whose profile has steadil

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 was seen by millions

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 broader implications of the word. The Brits

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 “Le

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 in Jerry Herman’s charming but much-misunde

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 Connolly to discus

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 grandstand

It’s an amazing statistic in itself that Jonathan Miller’s now iconic production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado is one-fifth as old as the piece itself - that is 26 years. For 25 of those Richard Suart has groveled magnificently as the Lord Hi

It was a real a real privilege being invited by the London Jewish Cultural Centre to interview Maxim Vengerov at Anna Pavlova's old London home - Ivy House in Hampstead.  I have known Maxim professionally and personally for 18 years and featured in his C

The image of the toilet cubicles lingers on but no one can deny the fierce theatricality that shakes up English National Opera whenever Calixto Bieito’s in town. His anarchic Don Giovanni made us reassess the motivations of both sexes in the piece; hi