Opus Arte

The three operas Mozart co-wrote with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte are undoubted milestones of the operatic repertoire: the Count’s failed seduction plans in Le Nozze di Figaro; the rake Don Giovanni’s final and eternal downfall; and finally the tried and failed fidelity of young lovers in Cosi fan tutte. The Royal Opera House currently presents all three masterpieces with outstanding conductors and casts as part of the Olympic Programme celebration through February and March. Click here for further information – special deals to attend all three operas as a package are available.

David Hockney’s first major exhibition of new landscape works recently opened at the Royal Academy. Featuring vivid paintings inspired by the East Yorkshire landscape, these large-scale works have been created especially for the galleries at the Royal Academy of Arts. David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture spans a 50 year period to demonstrate Hockney’s long exploration and fascination with the depiction of landscape.

The LPO and their artistic director Vladimir Jurowski will focus on the composer Sergei Prokofiev over the next weeks. Named ‘Prokofiev – Man of the people?’ the festival will explore one of the most misunderstood men in 20^th century music in fourteen events over 20 days, from 13 January until 1 February. The many highlights of the series include the performance of Prokofiev’s 5^th Piano Concerto with Stephen Osborne in a concert also including the 6^th Symphony (on 18 January) and the world premiere of Levon Atovmyan’s oratorio-arrangement of Prokofiev’s film score to Eisenstein’s film Ivan the Terrible (on 28 January): Atovmyan was confidante of both Shostakovich and Prokofiev, and a man who has done more than anyone else to bring the unheard work of both composers to life.

The Royal Opera House presents an unusual yet very welcome gift for the festive season: Richard Wagner’s midsummer comedy Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The colour, characters and vibrant life of medieval Nuremberg are at the heart of this glorious opera....

The Christmas season is well under way at the Royal Opera House with the Royal Ballet performing the ever-popular Nutcracker – also available on DVD from Opus Arte to enjoy at home!

Rudolf Nureyev’s colourful, “movie-star” version of Prokofiev’s Cinderella retains the classic Perrault story but sets it in America during the difficult years of the Great Depression in the 1930s and 1940s...

 Earlier this month, the BBC embarked on a landmark season exploring how the symphony evolved over the last three centuries and became one of the most complex forms of musical expression. Simon Russell Beale hosts four programmes....

The Royal Ballet currently performs Kenneth MacMillan’s classic showpiece Manon. Having been created for this company, the piece has now also entered the classical ballet repertory worldwide. The story itself is famous...

Opera North currently presents The Queen of Spades, Tchaikovsky’s dark tale of obsession and greed. The tour opens on 4^th November in Nottingham and is then coming to Newcastle, Salford Quays and London’s Barbican – check here....

Plácido Domingo, who celebrated his 70th birthday earlier this year, has played a special part in many Royal Opera Seasons since his debut at Covent Garden in 1971. His extraordinary dramatic presence and peerless musicality have been highlights...

After a successful start of the new season with the UK premiere of Weinberg’s The Passenger and a new production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, English National Opera will stage its first ever Rameau opera: Castor and Pollux is regarded as.....

The Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2011 were announced last Thursday at a ceremony at The Dorchester hotel in London. A host of musicians joined Gramophone and the record industry to celebrate the recordings selected as winners from this year's vintage. The Awards were hosted by soprano Susan Bullock...

 This autumn Opera North presents Gilbert & Sullivan’s opera Ruddigore with a fresh approach: Director Jo Davis brings the story forward from its Victorian melodrama period to the 1920’s/silent movie era and her interpretation.....

This autumn, the Royal Academy of Arts stages a new exhibition focusing on Edgar Degas’s preoccupation with movement as an artist of dance and ballet subjects. ‘Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement’ traces the development of the artist's ballet imagery throughout his career,

George Balanchine’s wonderful evocation of the brilliance and sparkle of emeralds, rubies and diamonds opens the Royal Ballet season this Tuesday 20^th September.   The ballet is a gem in its own right, and with contrasting moods and music brings the whole company on stage.....

The Royal Opera season starts tonight, Monday 12^th September, with Puccini’s triple bill Il Trittico. Antonio Pappano, Music Director of The Royal Opera, will conduct the three one-act operas which have not been presented in full by the Royal Opera since 1965. Director Richard Jones adds Il tabarro and Suor Angelica to his already acclaimed production of the comedy Gianni Schicci. The three short stories that make up Il trittico range from jealousy, murder and suicide to romance, exuberance and sheer transcendent joy. 

Sir Harrison Birtwistle's concerto was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for Christian Tetzlaff and unveiled by him in March to rave reviews. The composer himself studied the clarinet, but says, 'I had some violin lessons at school, so I have a memory of the physical feel of the instrument, in a sense. It's rather like remembering how to bowl a leg break in cricket, even if I couldn't do it now.' Also on Wednesday’s programme are Frank Bridge’s Isabella and Holst's The Planets which displays astonishing verve in its orchestration and in the radicalism of much of its content for its time.

This Sunday, the period instrument performance specialist Paul McCreesh will re-examine Mendelssohn's ever-popular Old Testament oratorio, a culmination of a large-scale project like the one that led up to his revelatory 2009 Proms performance of Haydn's The Creation. Out go certain old-fashioned conventions; in come period instruments, a raft of enthusiastic choirs and a sensational line-up of soloists.

Swan Lake is the quintessential Russian ballet - a Prince is expected to choose a bride from among the guests at a forthcoming ball. Instead he falls in love with Odette, the Swan Queen, whose swan subjects revert to human form between midnight and dawn. This concert performance of the ballet score promises to convey the symphonic proportions and sheer depth of feeling Tchaikovsky brings to the tale, qualities brought into fuller focus when the entire glorious score is heard. Valery Gergiev brings the undisputed experts of this repertoire, his Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre to London.

First on the bill in this Sunday evening Prom is Brahms’ violin concerto with featured artist Christian Tetzlaff. This is his first Proms performance of the technically demanding work by Brahms, all of whose concertos can be heard during this Proms season.

Das klagende Lied (Song of Lamentation) is one of Mahler’s earliest scores: An opulent, late romantic cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra based on fairy tales. Edward Gardner, English National Opera’s music director, leads the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers and soloists in the original version which only resurfaced as recently as 1969.

Martha Argerich, who celebrates her 70th birthday this summer, is regarded as one of the most virtuosic and passionate pianists of our time. Many of her interpretations are legendary and have, in the opinions of some critics, even surpassed her great idol's Vladimir Horowitz's. She has been recognised with the Praemium Imperiale, the 'Nobel Prize for the Arts' in 2005 and been the subject of a documentary film by Georges Gachot in 2002.

This Sunday, Gianandrea Noseda will conduct the BBC Philharmonic and the Chorus of the Mariinsky Theatre in a choral portrait of Rachmaninov that takes in familiar favourites as well as neglected masterpieces.  Much of Rachmaninov's best music has been slow to enter the repertoire. His evocative choral symphony The Bells is based on an adaptation by the Russian Symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont of verses by Edgar Allan Poe.

Semyon Bychkov takes the baton leading an expert cast in what promises to be one of the highlights of this year’s PROMS season: Verdi’s Requiem. Criticised but ultimately loved for its operatic theatricality, Verdi’s Mass for the Dead is the ultimate in dramatic intensity.

This is the first of a series of weekly stories highlighting a PROM performance – so please come back for these weekly updates and follow us on Twitter and Facebook where you will also be able to find them.

Antonio Pappano returns to the Royal Albert Hall with the Orchestra and Chorus of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, Rome and a stellar cast for a rare revival of Rossini's final opera: William Tell – the magnum opus about the legendary founding fathers of Switzerland and the hero who shoots an apple from his son's head.

The Glyndebourne Festival 2011 opens this Summer on Saturday 21st May and runs through to Sunday 28th August.

With two new productions in the form of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Handel's Rinaldo you can expect tickets to move fairly quickly. Other productions include the revivals of L'elisir d'amore,

The BBC Music Magazine announced their 2011 Award-winners at a ceremony on Tuesday 12th April hosted by its Editor Oliver Condy and Radio 4’s Today presenter James Naughtie.

The awards are the only classical music awards in which the main categories are voted for by the public. The magazine’s website received more than...

The awards season is upon us and the Royal Opera House hosted a glamorous BAFTAS awards show on Sunday 13^th February 2011. As expected The King’s Speech swept the board with 7 awards, including the award for Original Music. 

Tickets are now on sale for special Valentine Day's previews of CARMEN - for the first time ever in spectacular 3D! Starring Christine Rice as Carmen, Bryan Hymel as Don José with Maija Kovalevska as Micaëla and Aris Argiris as Escamillo. Opens 5 March for general release. 

Plácido Domingo’s star turn in the title role of Verdi’s opera Simon Boccanegra won rave reviews from around the world, earlier this year. The stunning production, filmed live at the Royal Opera House, has now been released on DVD

Ballet captures the public imagination in a way unlike other art forms. The analogy of the swan – furious activity belied by poise and insouciant beauty – is implicit to ballet, and is equally analogous of life. Perhaps this is why film makers and the movie going public are as fascinated with ballet as dance aficionados themselves.

The approach of Christmas brings tantalising imagery: twinkling lights, fluttering snow - and fairytale ballet and opera performances. For those of you without a ticket this season, we have a spectacular array of sumptuous fairytale performances to bring a little magic to your home.

The Royal Opera House in London is famous for its world class performances and exemplary production values. But the company has also carved an impressive niche as an innovator in its field, with the latest example being a groundbreaking series of viral short films called Danny Knows Best.

This month’s newly released opera productions are dramatic masterpieces, exposing ways in which complication is implicit to the human experience, in very different ways.

On 22 October, 1811, virtuoso pianist, composer and music teacher Franz Liszt was born. He was one of the preeminent composers of the Neudeutsche Schule, the New German School, as well as a scholar and a philanthropist.

The new opera season often brings with it something very exciting – new operas. Whether first works by up-and-coming stars or premieres from industry professionals, it is always interesting to witness the fledgling outings of a brand new work.

Photo © Clarchen & Matthias Baus

Puccini’s La fanciulla del West is available on Blu-ray for the first time ever – brought to life in typically spectacular fashion by De Nederlandse Opera.

The 2010 Gramophone Awards took place on September 30. One of the most esteemed classical awards ceremonies in the world, the Gramophone Awards provides an excellent barometer of the trends – as well as the health – of the sector.

Photo © Alastair Muir  

Opus Arte DVD The Fairy Queen won best DVD performance at the Gramophone magazine awards, this weekend. Purcell’s soaring semi-opera was performed at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2009 and released on DVD in April. The original Gramophone review found the DVD performance to be “beautifully sung, terrifically acted, this is a magnificent show”.

The hunt to find the best Carmen précis in 140 characters or less has drawn to a close. Here’s the winning entry: Sexy siren makes soldier swoon, he skips out and sides with smugglers. Swaggering sportsman sweeps said siren, soldier slays her.

Opus Arte is on twitter – @OpusArte – and to celebrate, we are running a competition for the best 140 character or less précis of perennial favourite Carmen.

Photo © Alberto Arzoz

The Royal Opera’s new season is underway with a rich and varied assortment of operas scheduled for the run-up to Christmas.

Photo © Richard Smith

The new Royal Opera Season begins with both a favourite and a novel twist: Mozart’s elegant and witty Così fan tutte will be gracing the stage at Covent Garden and screened live to a host of cinemas across the UK.

Photo © Johann Persson

The Nutcracker has become one of the most revered ballets of all time. Tchaikovsky’s delightful score woven around ETA Hoffman’s magical fairytale is a firm family favourite and especially synonymous with Christmas time – filled, as it is, with glistening snowflakes and enchanted toys.

Photo © Catherine Ashmore

Placido Domingo is set to star in a very special production of Rigoletto – filmed on location in the streets of Mantua, Italy, and broadcast live on the BBC over two nights, September 4th and 5th.

This innovative approach to an opera that is 160 years old begs the question: what other opera productions have been tackled in ways either inspired or insane?

Shakespeare’s plays have been entertaining theatre audiences for 400 years. The Bard has retained his place as the most famous writer of all time due to his deft touch with pre-existing stories, incredible word play and memorable, fully formed characters.

The Bayreuth Festival is an annual celebration of the works of Richard Wagner. Wagner founded the festival in 1876, with the view to glean more financial and creative control over performances of his work.

The Bolshoi Ballet is one of the principal dance companies of Russia and one of the most famous ballet companies in the world. The company is making a highly anticipated visit to London this summer to appear at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

Ivan Vasiliev in Spartacus. Photo © Damir Yusupov, Bolshoi Theatre

Photo © Neil Rickards

The First Night of the Proms is one of the most anticipated dates of the classical music season. This year, 76 concerts are taking place at the Royal Albert Hall, in addition to a series of Chamber Proms and matinee concerts at Cadogan Hall and a selection of special events before the season culminates in the famous Last Night and the Proms in the Park, in Hyde Park on September 11.

Photo © Catherine Ashmore

Plácido Domingo stars in the title role of Verdi’s opera Simon Boccanegra at the Royal Opera House this month (until 15 July). Domingo has often sung the tenor role of young revolutionary Gabriele Adorno in this opera (including for The Royal Opera in 1997). Now he is tackling the baritone role of political master and former corsair Simon Boccanegra, Doge of Genoa.

July 7 2010 marks 150 years since the birth of Gustav Mahler, one of the most performed and recorded classical composers of all time.

The United States celebrates its independence from Britain on the fourth of July, remembering the Declaration of Independence back in 1776. In the run up to this American public holiday, there is no better time to cast an eye over the luminaries of classical music from the Land of the Free.

©Robert Scarth, 2005

       © Mike Hoban, 2009

The summer festival season is upon us; picnics, hazy evenings and beautiful music amidst beautiful scenery. Here is just a tiny snapshot of some of the festivals bringing classical music to life across Europe over the warmer months.

                                      © Schnittke, 2005

The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by English conductor Simon Rattle and is based at the Philharmonie, a 1960s build which has been modernised since due to fire and water damage. The orchestra was initially founded in 1882 and just five years later, Hans von Bülow, one of the most esteemed conductors in the world, took the reins.

©Audrey and Patrick Scales, 2009

Sport and music go hand in the hand: the sense of anticipation before a big game starts is perfectly accompanied by a stirring number; an ‘80s movie training montage would be nothing without pumping synthetic beats alongside the Lycra, and who can say they don’t extract pleasure from watching our football players stumble over the words to the national anthem?

Tonight is the second date of the BP Summer Screen season, showing the Royal Ballet’s triple bill Chroma, Tryst and Symphony in C, on a big screen in Trafalgar Square, London.

8th June 1671 – birth of Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni. Venetian composer Albinoni was one of the chief Italian artists of the Baroque period, and composed around 50 operas over the course of his prolific career. Nevertheless, it is for his instrumental pieces that he is most well known today, and particularly for his championing of the oboe as a soloist's instrument. He proved an influential figure to Johann Sebastian Bach who took inspiration from Albinoni's themes.

    A nationwide singalong of songs from the opera Carmen kicks off tonight at 6:45pm.

©Zachary Walsh, 2010

On the first true summer day of 2010, the Holland Park Opera season opened surely the most famous of all: Bizet’s Carmen.

As the first rays of summer warm the English countryside, the outdoor music season emergences from the wings and takes centre stage. Now in its 14th year, Opera Holland Park is gearing up for another season of interesting and eclectic live performance in one of London’s prettiest parks.

©Richard Thomas 2006

Dates have been released for the entire Royal Opera House 2010-11 season and booking is now open for all performances.

The new season kicks off with Così fan tutte, an opera buffa, or comic opera, by Mozart...

© Peter Suranyi (8/8/2009)

27 May 1822 – Birth of Joachim Raff. During his lifetime, Joseph Joachim Raff was one of the most famous German composers of the age, but today he is mostly forgotten. Raff was a friend and a colleague of Franz Liszt and was held in similar esteem to his contemporary. His work is said to have influenced that of Richard Strauss. Raff’s Lenore symphony was premiered in 1965 by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Herrmann, who compared the work in beauty and importance to pieces by Liszt and Tchaikovsky.

The first opera of 2011 at the Royal Opera House is Il barbiere di Siviglia, the barber of Seville, a deft comedy from the pen of Rossini. It is performed here by a young cast, endeavouring to capture the playfulness and witty touches of this Italian opera from 1816...

© Peter Suranyi (8/8/2009)

14 May 1747 – the first performance of Williams Gluck’s opera, La Semiramide riconosciuta. Gluck had joined a travelling opera troupe led by Pietro Mingotti, which had resulted in the composer’s first successful opera outing. As a result, he was commissioned to produce this piece to celebrate the birthday of Maria Theresa of Austria. The opera was a success, despite the librettist, Metastasio’s utter disregard for the music of Gluck.

13 May 1833 – the premiere of Mendelssohn’s fourth symphony, the Italian symphony, in London. The work was a partial fulfilment of a commission from the Philharmonic Society of London and, at its premiere, Mendelssohn conducted the piece himself. He was never fully satisfied with it however, and stopped the score from ever being published in his lifetime.

The Classical Brit Awards took place on Thursday May 13th at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The full glittering event will be broadcast on ITV1 on Tuesday May 18th at 10:35pm.

© Leon Brocard (2/5/2005)

11 May 1945 – debut performance of Hashkiveinu, a Hebrew vocal and organ piece by Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein’s religious piece incorporates the prayer text from the Jewish Sabbath evening service and was commissioned for inclusion in a programme of contemporary music to be performed at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York.

© Carl Van Vechten 1944

10 May 1894 – premiere of Guntram, an opera by Richard Strauss. Guntram was Strauss’ first opera and it premiered at the Grossherzogliches Hoftheater in Weimar. It was not particularly successful. However, it received a new lease of life at the hands of Gustav Mahler who used the Prelude to Act 1 during a concert the following year, and subsequently premiered other Preludes from the opera in both Vienna and New York.

7 May 1849 – birth of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.  Tchaikovsky is one of the most well-known and well-loved composers to have ever lived. He composed the music for perennial favourites of the ballet cannon The Nutcracker, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. He also composed one of the most famous pieces of classical music, the 1812 Overture, which has been immortalised through its association with 4th July celebrations in the United States.

5 May 1891 – the official opening of Carnegie Hall, New York. The inaugural concert was conducted by maestro Walter Damrosch and featured the music of composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It was named after entrepreneur and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who paid for its construction, and it was built to serve as the home for the New York Symphony Society and the Oratorio Society of New York. 

© Matchity (2005)

3 May 1831 – the premiere of Zampa, an opera by Ferdinand Hérold. Hérold is mostly remembered today as a composer of ballet, but Zampa was one of a large repertoire of his operas and by far the most successful. Zampa is an opera comique, and although the opera as a whole is not widely known today, the overture is still performed regularly.  Just a month after the premiere of Zampa, Hérold died of tuberculosis.

April 23rd is St. George’s Day in England, commemorating the country’s patron saint. It may not be a bank holiday (that’s a national holiday to those not familiar with the UK’s bizarre semantics) but that is no reason to not celebrate. To help with that, here is a look at some of the best composers and classical music to come out of the country represented by the St. George’s Cross.

23 April 1858 – birth of English composer and suffragette Dame Ethel Smyth. Ethel wrote six operas as well as assorted choral and chamber music, having studied at the Conservatory in Leipzig and befriending contemporaries including Dvořák and Tchaikovsky. She composed ‘The March of the Women’, the anthem of the women’s suffrage movement, and served two months in Holloway prison for breaking windows at the command of Emily Pankhurst.

© National Portrait Gallery, London

© Thomas Bloch

20 April 1928 – the first public performance of the Ondes Martenot. Maurice Martenot was a French cellist, until he invented the Ondes Martenot and became an early protagonist of electronic instrumentation. Its maiden voyage was at a performance of Dimitrios Levidis’ Poòme, in which Martenot acted as the ‘ondist’.

15 April 1912 – the Titanic sank, taking with it English violinist and the ship’s band leader Wallace Henry Hartley. Folklore has it that the band played music to the very last, soothing the panicked passengers with the hymn ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’. None of the musicians aboard the ship survived, and the hymn was played at Hartley’s funeral as he loved it, so there is circumstantial evidence to support the anecdotal.

14 April 1759 – death of George Frideric Handel. Handel stayed in Ireland for about eight months after Messiah opened, but then returned to London, happier and richer. He had a cataract in one eye which was performed upon by ‘Chevalier’ John Taylor, oculist to the king, and considered widely to have caused the death of Johann Sebastian Bach. Handel went blind. He died in London aged 74. Over 3000 people attended his funeral and he was buried at Westminster Abbey.

13 April 1742 – the first performance of Handel’s Messiah. Handel was running the Covent Garden Theatre and had enjoyed fame and success in London. But times were changing, he was falling out of favour and the theatre was gaining a reputation as a low haunt. Handel jumped at an invitation to Dublin, to host a charity performance. He had written Messiah in three weeks in London, and despite initial protest from the church in Ireland, in Dublin it was debuted, to a rapturous reception.

12 April 1867 – the first performance of Jacques Offenbach’s operetta La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris. An opéra bouffe, a genre known for its satire and parody, La Grande-Duchesse pokes fun at the military. It was banned three years later, after France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War, but for those three years it was extremely popular, and was attended by a stream of European royalty.

© Mark Kamin (Dec, 2006)

11 April 1888 – opening of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The inaugural concert featured 120 musicians and 500 choristers, performing works by Beethoven, Bach, Handel and Wagner. The building had been finished in 1886 but a stream of bizarre concerns ranging from the provision of street lighting and the necessity of filling in a small canal delayed the grand opening for almost two years.

8 April 1848 – death of Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. A prolific composer, Donizetti was responsible for about 75 operas and 16 symphonies, as well as a myriad songs, cantatas, chamber pieces and other works. His most famous work is Lucia di Lammermoor from 1835. Famous and respected within his lifetime, he counted Giuseppe Verdi amongst his friends. He contracted syphilis and succumbed to madness, dying in an institution.

© Peter Geymayar

7 April 1805 – the first public performance of Beethoven’s third symphony, Eroica, at the Theater-an-der-Wien in Vienna, Austria. Legend has it that Eroica was to be dedicated to Napoleon who Beethoven had very much admired – until he crowned himself Emperor in 1804, inspiring the composer to scratch through the dedication. Beethoven conducted for this performance.

^{© Hermitage Museum, 2010}

^{© Peter Suranyi (8/8/2009)}

6 April 1847 – the Royal Italian Opera house was unveiled in Covent Garden with a performance of Rossini’s Semiramide. The Theatre Royal had existed on the location since 1728, but had been destroyed by fire in 1808 – a serious concern for entertainment spaces in those pre-electricity days. The new building transferred ballet and opera from the Haymarket, beginning the Royal Opera House’s affiliation with Covent Garden that continues to this day.

4 April 1954 – Arturo Toscanini conducted his last live performance, with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, in a concert of Wagner’s music at Carnegie Hall, in New York. He was 87 years old. Recordings with the NBC are still available, as are performances conducting the New York Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestras. He was considered within his lifetime to be the greatest conductor of the 20th century.

^{© Bain News Service (Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress))}

1 April 1930 – Death of Cosima Wagner. Cosima was the daughter of composer Franz Liszt. She married the piano virtuoso and composer Hans von Bülow in 1857 but began an affair with Richard Wagner, whom she married in 1870. After the death of her husband, she directed the festival they had started at their home, Bayreuth, until she retired in 1906.

© Leon Brocard (2/5/2005)

29 March 1871 – The Royal Albert Hall opened in London. The purpose of the new venue was the advancement of the Arts and Sciences and works of industry of all nations, as per the vision of the Royal Consort, Prince Albert. Wagner, Verdi and Elgar all conducted their first UK performances of their own works in the Royal Albert Hall, and it remains one of London’s most prestigious venues.

29 March 1827 – Beethoven’s funeral procession wove through Vienna. Franz Schubert was one of the pallbearers. Franz Stober painted the scene, in which tens of thousands of people are seen to line the streets. The Austrian drama author Franz Grillparzer wrote the eulogy which contained the line: “we stand weeping over the broken strings of an instrument now stilled”.

© Matthias Creutzgier (2010)

The Dresden Staatskapelle, Saxon State Orchestra, Dresden, or, to give it its full name, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, is one of the oldest orchestras in the world...

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is a relative youngster, having been founded in 1949. It is one of three orchestras serving the city of Munich and derives its name from its association with the Bayerischer Rundfunk

© Alberto Venzago/LSO (2010)

The London Symphony Orchestra lives in the Barbican, its home since 1982, and is considered to be one of the world’s more flamboyant orchestras. It was founded in 1904 and was the first self-governing orchestra in the UK. In 1912, The LSO was booked onto The Titanic, to transport it across the Atlantic for an American tour, but last minute changes of plans averted the sinking of the orchestra.

© Jordan Fischer (9/12/2005)

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra began life in 1891 and is referred to as one of the American ‘Big Five’, alongside the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras.

^{© Чръный человек (12/9/2009)}

The Russian National Orchestra premiered in Moscow in 1990 and instantly became synonymous with such beautiful performances that it has belied its comparative youth and become a ‘best orchestras’ list fixture.

© Yair Haklai (21/8/2008)

The Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra is also known as the Kirov Orchestra, and it lives in the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Shakespeare’s plays have been entertaining theatre audiences for 400 years. In their day, the theatre was the normal means of entertainment for everybody, regardless of wealth or stature. The cinema holds much the same place in our hearts today and so it’s fitting that Shakespeare’s Globe will be screening two plays from this summer’s roster in cinemas around the UK.

© Riggwelter (15/8/2006)

French opera has its own unique, rich history and so it follows that France boasts some of the most venerated opera houses in the world.

^{© Atomic Jeep (5/12/2005)}

Live theatre or opera shown in the cinema is a novel quirk – with the added bonus of bringing big city performances to smaller regional outposts. Where else would you find popcorn alongside Puccini?