Lise Davidsen, Anja Mittermüller, Gerald Finley Among 2026 International Classical Music Awards Winners

(Photo credits: Hole, Karpati&Zarewicz, Light) The Jury of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) announced the winners of the awards for the 2026 edition. This article only features winners in vocal categories. Conductor and music director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Jakub Hrůša, was named the artist of the year. Composer of the year was given to Péter {…}

Royal Ballet & Opera 2025–26 Review: The Makropulos Case

(Photo: Camilla Greenwell) Pinching twitching nerves, Czech master Janáček’s angst-ridden “The Makropulos Case” warns of extra life. Lead role Emilia Marty’s present incarnation joins a palimpsest: Eugenia Montez, Ellian MacGregor, Ekaterina Myshkin, Else Müller and the titular Elina Makropulos. A magical elixir has sustained her for three centuries. Strife drives the aria-void work. Through strings unhinged, alarming accidentals and duplicitous {…}

Royal Ballet & Opera 2025–26 Review: Jakub Hrůša and Friends in Concert

(Photo credit: Tristram Kenton) Profane escapes scale heights heretical in offbeat tales. These contests of one-upmanship with God breed killers; lesser sinners stray with strangers. Dvořák’s unnamed “Spectre’s Bride” – the leading lady of his 1885 cantata – steals away with a dead demon. Four decades later a Chinese adventurer is robbed and killed in Bartók’s “The Miraculous Mandarin,” a {…}