The giant chandeliers were lit and the stage was set for the Spanish pianist to weave his musical magic on his Nepali audience, who had gathered to hear him play on this November 21 evening. And ...

Since the word derives from the French term for "opening", you would think that overtures would usually be preludes to something else. And for the most part they are. Overtures as a rule introduce, in ...

The movie overture—music set against a blank screen or still images before the drama unfolds—all but disappeared from film sometime in the 1970s. Once a Hollywood mainstay, overtures evolved naturally ...

While opera remains the most acquired of the classical music tastes, opera overtures are pretty easy to digest. Some opera overtures are known to many who don’t consider themselves to be classical ...

Nicholas Méhul (1763-1817) is an intriguing transitional figure in French music, with a career that historically spanned the final years of the reign of Louis XVI and the heyday of Napoleon, and ...

In this special 4th of July edition of Classical Classroom Research Presentations, Dacia ponders why Americans listen to Russian music on their Independence Day. She uncovers the [not really that] ...

Stephen Sondheim’s “Pacific Overtures” is one of the master songwriter’s most rarely performed works. The show begins in 1853 and tells the tale of how an isolationist Japan was westernized when ...