When I first encountered Le nozze di Figaro when I was a kid, I couldn’t make much sense of it. Characters jumped out windows, hid in closets, pretended that their feet were injured, and then to end the proceedings, they put on disguises and mistook one another’s...

Most people today seem to care less and less about whether other people are straight, gay, transgender, or transsexual. Perhaps the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage is one factor behind the trend. Another could be the growing public affection for certain gay...

In a future post, I’ll write about some of the free open-enrollment courses that you’ll find on Coursera.com and other online learning platforms. I’m writing about something different today –lectures about classical music that you can watch online any time you...

If you love classical music, you have already been feasting repeatedly on recordings of the often-performed violin concertos by Brahms, the Bruch no. 1, the Mendelssohn e minor, and the Tchaikovsky. In other words, the “biggies.”If you love the genre, you will find...

My father was born in Russia in 1903. He actually saw Tsar Nicolas II and his family once or twice. They would take the Trans-Siberian Railway to vacation in Kostroma province and step out onto the train platform in Galich, my dad’s home town, to greet the people. My...

All evenings of classical music end eventually – even most performances of Meistersinger. But after the final notes have died away, why not ask this question before you grab your coat and head for the exit? How did that piece of music end?Unless you were...