One of the 20th century’s most important—and most lurid—operas had its American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on today’s date in 1907.
Richard Strauss’s “Salome” is a faithful setting of Oscar Wilde’s play about the decadent Biblical princess who, after her famous “dance of the seven...Episode details...
One of the most famous British composers from the Age of Shakespeare was the lutenist and songwriter John Dowland. His life is better documented than many of his contemporaries, but much about him remains puzzling. Dowland wrote that he was born in 1563, but doesn’t tell us where—some speculate...Episode details...
Now, it might seem unlikely that Katherine Hepburn, Winona Ryder and Charles Ives might have anything in common, but bear with us a moment...
Hepburn appeared in a 1933 film based on Louisa May Alcott’s classic 19th century novel “Little Women,” as did Ryder in a successful 1994 cinematic...Episode details...
When boomers wax nostalgic about the Kennedy Administration, it’s Lerner & Loewe’s musical “Camelot” they start to hum. After all, “Camelot” opened in 1960 just a month after John F. Kennedy was elected, and, a week after his assassination in 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy told historian Theodore H....Episode details...
Composers—like anybody else—can be quite superstitious about numbers. Gustav Mahler, for example, was reluctant to assign the number “9” to his song cycle symphony, “Das Lied von der Erde,” fearing that work would turn out to be his last: after all, Beethoven and Bruckner had only completed nine...Episode details...
When TIME magazine chose Albert Einstein as its “Person of the Century” for their Millennium issue, their profile catalogued his achievements in physics and philosophy, but made no mention of Einstein’s interest in music—or music’s interest in him. That’s where we come in.
In addition to being...Episode details...
Today marks the anniversary of the creation of a famous classical music nickname, “Les Six”—French for “The Six.” That’s what Parisian music critic Henri Collet dubbed six composers on this day in 1920, in a magazine article.
Three of the composers Collet named included three still often heard...Episode details...
The modern French composer Olivier Messiaen played the piano part in one of the strangest premiere performances of the 20th century on today’s date in 1941. As the composer put it: “My Quartet for the End of Time was conceived and written during my captivity as a prisoner of war and received its...Episode details...
Some instruments seem to have all the luck—or at least all the concertos!
If you play piano or violin, you have hundreds of concertos to choose from. But if your instrument is the harp—and you will forgive the pun—the pickings are rather slim.
This hardly seems fair to one of mankind’s oldest...Episode details...
