Classic FM 

Joseph Calleja on tackling Mario Lanza

Maltese Tenor Joseph Calleja talks to Classic FM about his new tribute album to Mario Lanza.

New Classical App makes music theory fun 

‘Singsmash’ a new app for iPhone and iPad promises to make learning scales and music theory fun for musicians.

Arts Journal- Slipped Disc 

A public protest at Katherine Jenkins

‘Real’ Opera Singer Donal Byrne protests after BBC Television introduces Katherine Jenkins as ‘the opera singer’ on breakfast television.

Sad News: A trail- blazing horn is gone, too soon

Mary Knepper, an American horn player in the English Chamber Orchestra has died at the age of 63.

Dallas plucks its new boss from the boondocks

Jonathan Martin is announced as the new president of Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

Gramophone Blog 

The Great and the Good 

Mark Wigglesworth discusses if it is possible to define truly great performances from merely very good ones.

FT Music

‘You have to be strong’ 

Conductor Marin Alsop shares how she is trying to help women make it to the top in a male-dominated profession.

The Guardian 

How we made: Franco Zeffirelli and John Tooley on Tosca (1964)

The director and assistant general administrator of the 1964 production of Tosca in which Maria Callas and Renato Cioni starred talk to The Guardian’s Anna Tims.

(Written on July 24, 2012 )

Gramophone

Watch soprano Angela Meade on the Gramophone Player

The Beverly Sill Artist Award- Winner currently starts at the Met in Verdi’s Ernani

Toscanini and Heifetz set the highest of standards

Two more titans of Gramophone for our Hall of Fame

Playing Debussy and Ravel on gut strings

David Watkin, cellist with the Eroica Quartet, explains his ensemble’s recent recording challenge

Championing Rattle for Gramophone’s Hall of Fame

The Berlin Phil’s conductor gets my vote.

The Times

Tyne Daly on the legend of Maria Callas

A final episode in the tempestuous life of Maria Callas is being recreated on the West End stage

The Guardian

Why there are so few female composers

Women who write music are still far outnumbered by their male peers. We need to adress this inequality. Here’s how

LA Times

Verdi, was a man of, and ahead of, his time

Los Angeles Opera’s ‘Simon Boccanegra’ is but one example of a tale that resonates beyond its time

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-verdi-appreciation-20120205,0,3038942.story

(Written on February 9, 2012 )