Recently, the world of classical music was rocked by the spectacular discovery of new works by two major composers. In 2024, scholars discovered a Serenade in C, soon nicknamed “A Very Little Night Music,” by Mozart. The little composition, written when he was about 12 years old, was found in a library in Leipzig: https://youtu.be/SS-tEwn4H-k?si=gSrtZE6Dm-b6ZyFF […]
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Posted inReport
Welcome 2 Shorworld
In 2024, we reported on the meteoric rise of a composer named Alexey Shor. His music, which resembled the kind of music theory homework that gets Bs and Cs (and that multiple musicians compared to material produced by AI) was suddenly everywhere: in Valetta, Yerevan, and Dubai, but also in London, New York and Amsterdam. […]
Posted inReview
The Vicissitudes of Concept
Her voice precedes her; this, at least, is no surprise. It is among opera’s oldest tricks, for an onstage character to “overhear” the future object of their desire in advance of both their own and the audience’s sight; falling in love on voice alone is, after all, the very premise of the genre. In “Salome,” […]
Posted inReport
The Numbers Game
It begins with Timothée Chalamet’s recent offhand remark about opera, because of course it does. Things have moved quickly since I began my journalism career in 2020. That was a time of near-instant internet news. Since then, Buzzfeed died a death, news brands have pivoted to video, Google AI has allowed users to sidestep news […]
Posted inEssay
The Art of the Ideal
Can music change the world? That it can and does functions as a truism across many spheres of U.S. culture. Attali canonically argued that music, an element of what Marxists call the “superstructure,” can actually influence or foreshadow world-historical changes in the “base” of economic relations and production. The belief that music can change the […]
Posted inReport
Stand By Your Man
“If you want to be an opinionated columnist or a partisan campaigner on social media,” the BBC’s director general Tim Davie wrote in October 2020, “then that is a valid choice, but you should not be working at the BBC.” When Davie took over from Tony Hall as director general in 2020 (and in the […]
Posted inOpinion
Is Post-Piece Silence a Recession Indicator?
The motivic development winds down. The harmony modulates into the home key. The final chord rings out. The conductor’s hands are poised at shoulder height, holding the room. The audience sits in hushed silence. And sits. And sits and sits and sits and sits and sits. I’ve lost count of the times in recent years […]
Posted inReport
Inside the UK’s Amateur University Opera Societies
The supporting pillars, ornate in red and gold, glimmer dully in the dark. Icons of the Church Fathers line the walls. An elaborate altar, framed by stained-glass windows, is upstaged metaphorically and downstaged literally by a gaudy Christmas tree, every decoration glittering in the light from a small rig. Several young people stand at the […]
Posted inBarTálk
Sin City Drifting
Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” is a work of relentless cynicism, where three runaway convicts build a Sin City that peaks then crashes. The opera also charts the gradual souring of a philosophy through liberal ideals, to the libertarian pursuit of freedom at all cost, to an […]
Posted inRankings & Roundups
(Almost) Every Piece by Darius Milhaud, Ranked
“The complete Milhaud? Won’t you be holed up in a bunker for six months?” said a friend when I mentioned this project. If people know one thing about Darius Milhaud, it is that he was one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His catalogue includes 443 opus numbers, composed between 1910 and 1973. […]