Opera singer, producer and librettist Caitlin Vincent explores big questions about her art form in Opera Wars – a lively book bristling with ideas.
- Principal Fellow and Professor of Music, The University of Melbourne
The current Lord Mayor of Melbourne has said if re-elected he would sell the City of Melbourne’s majority stake in Regent Theatre. What could this mean for the community?
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has now announced it was an error to cancel a performance by Jayson Gillham. Indeed, classical music has often been tied to politics.
Beethoven initially composed the work for the enthronement of his friend as archbishop. Two centuries on, it has endured the test of time.
You’re the Voice reinforces the view that supporting the Voice to Parliament is an act of national reconciliation we can take together.
The classical music industry has especially high numbers of people drawn from private wealth and educational privilege
In many countries, helpful background information and context is offered to audiences in the accompanying program – why are Australians missing out?
We asked five experts to analyse and grade the Coalition and ALP arts and cultural policies.
Universities supposedly have adopted a more corporate approach – but most corporate board members have expertise in the area their company operates in and are more accountable to shareholders.
Premiering in 1937 in Frankfurt during the Third Reich, there is a ritualistic force to Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. This makes it a guilty pleasure for some and perfect fodder for ad jingles.
The issues dominating public debates about academic freedom are not where the greatest threats lie.
What is musicology and why is it important?
Opera Australia has been hit hard by the pandemic’s economic impact. It’s time to rethink our approach to funding opera, with a focus on local companies.
A new quarterly essay looks at changes in how we market Australian performing arts – but is this necessary in a globalised digital marketplace?
Arts criticism in Australia is under threat, writes Melbourne-based novelist, poet and theatre critic Alison Croggon. One solution may be state subsidy of arts criticism.
Gioachino Rossini’s opera was originally meant as a satire of royalist France. A new production updates the work for a modern audience, setting the drama in a museum where the paintings come to life.
Where is the nation-building cultural vision, the statement of cultural aspiration in this budget?
Our identity unquestionably shapes (and can limit) how we interact with the world. But it should not become the only foundation upon which we build our understanding of it.
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremburg) is a long, complex work. An ensemble performance by Opera Australia transports Wagner’s 16th-century guild of mastersingers to a modern-day men’s club.
“They have been crucifying Othello into an opera,” Lord Byron later wrote after watching Rossini’s opera. But the performance does much to highlight the play’s racial politics.
Economist David Throsby in a new Platform Paper calls for strong cultural policies from the Australian government.
At a time when young people across the West are increasingly sceptical about liberal democracy, the Netflix series Babylon Berlin reminds us of the lessons to be learnt from the history of the Weimar Republic.
Last night’s budget failed to offer a compelling overall policy framework and vision for the arts in Australia. Like a Beckett play, narratively not much is going on.
The carol ‘Silent Night’ has been translated into 140 languages and renditions have been sung by everyone, from Bing Crosby to Chewbacca. This is the story behind its success.
Technological advances in music production have all but obliterated the need for popular music to be transcribed into musical notation. So why is musical literacy still important?
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