‘Knowing another world, how other people work and having a completely different role is healthy.’ Daniel Harding rehearses at Musikverein music hall in Vienna in May 2021. Photograph: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images   He has performed with some of the top orchestras in the world, but claims that his new side job as an airline pilot has […]

Blind casting … Agathe Rousselle in Last Days at the Royal Opera House. Photograph: © Camilla Greenwell 2022   It contains a thinly developed narrative, garbled speech, a recurring motif of cereal bowls, and a fast-talking cattle auctioneer who portrays his manager. We meet the group behind the risk-taking new production at the Royal Opera House. […]

If you're going to conduct Michael Tippett's music, you have to like it. His music is irritating to play because it is impractically constructed, sometimes on the border of feasibility, and difficult for musicians to comprehend. Tippett was completely disoriented on the podium at the first performance of his Second Symphony, and subsequently, under the […]