Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2025 i BBC Music Magazine

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Today, she is best known for her popular carol ‘Jesus Christ the Apple Tree’ plus various other choral, vocal and chamber works, and as the former editor of the Penguin Book of Carols. During the Second World War, however, composer Elizabeth Poston appears to have led a double life… as a British secret agent. Poston conducted her clandestine operations from within the depths of the BBC, which she joined in 1940, eventually reaching the role of European Music Supervisor three years later. Working alone in Bush House in London (pictured above), she is believed to have been responsible for picking out precise pieces of music which, when broadcast across Europe, contained hidden messages that could be only deciphered by those in possession of a code. Famously discreet, even after the…

Berlin Philharmonic concerts in occupied France may have been well attended, but the country’s own composers were not all so welcoming to their German visitors. While Darius Milhaud, from a Jewish family, and Germaine Tailleferre escaped to the US, fellow members of ‘Les Six’ group of composers stuck around and expressed their opposition to the Nazis in various ways. For Louis Durey, that meant refusing to compose anything at all; ditto Georges Auric, with the exception of his pointed Quatre chants de la France malheureuse (‘Four songs for a miserable France’). Francis Poulenc did continue to compose, but loaded his music with subversive references. He and Durey were also members of the Resistance organisation the Front National des Musiciens, which aimed to champion French culture and protect Jewish musicians. Among…

‘THERE’S JUST A HANDFUL OF LIVING COMPOSERS WHO CAN LEGITIMATELY CLAIM TO HAVE ALTERED THE DIRECTION OF MUSICAL HISTORY AND STEVE REICH IS ONE OF THEM.’—Guardian ‘TRAVELLING ACROSS THE ENTIRE SWEEP OF THIS EXTRAORDINARY BOXSET, YOU’RE JOYOUSLY REMINDED OF REICH’S DIVERSITY AND INVENTION OVER 60 YEARS. IT’S A LOVINGLY PREPARED AND CURATED COLLECTION. A MUSICAL EVOLUTIONARY LEAP HOUSED IN A DISCOGRAPHIC TREAT.’—Uncut, Reissue of the Month A 27-disc set spanning Steve Reich’s 60-year career Includes first recordings of the composer’s latest works Jacob’s Ladder (2023) and Traveler’s Prayer (2020) Plus two extensive booklets containing new essays by MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS, NICO MUHLY and a comprehensive listener’s guide by TIMO ANDRES INCLUDES: It’s Gonna Rain Come Out Piano Phase Pendulum Music Four Organs Phase Patterns Drumming Clapping Music Six Pianos Music…

‘We performed our first Winterreise at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and it was virtually without rehearsal,’ remembers pianist Alfred Brendel about working with Fischer-Dieskau. ‘Even at improvised performances, his command was impeccable. In our collaboration we were always partners, and it was mainly due to him that the perception of the “accompanist” that had still applied to Gerald Moore vanished. ‘Fischer-Dieskau was one of the very few singers who performed German lieder internationally in big, packed halls, his diction able to reach the last row. In lieder, the words should remain clearly articulated in the foreground – listen to the early recordings of Winterreise by Lotte Lehmann or Peter Anders from the mid-20th century: there is a “three-dimensional” quality in their diction. ‘Some of Schubert’s greatest creations point to an…

Podium charisma  A teachable skill? Conductors command the respect of their orchestra with everything from humour to terror – though these days, the likes of George Szell are thankfully a rarer breed. But how to teach that all-important charisma to tomorrow’s podium stars? For Alexander Shelley, it’s all about the music: ‘I believe Picasso talked about visual artists spending years trying to draw the perfect circle, and that their artistry was defined by deviation,’ he says. ‘I think that’s such a beautiful analogy for interpretation. As conductors we’re interpretative artists, trying to get closer to the intellectual truth behind a piece of music – that perfect circle of complete comprehension. ‘But any conductor will approach the work through the prism of their individuality, which automatically creates an interpretation. So as…

May Festival Cincinnati, OH, 16-24 May mayfestival.com It’s all change at Cincinnati’s choralfest, as soprano Renée Fleming takes the artistic helm. She revisits her Grammy Award-winning disc Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene and joins baritone Rod Gilfry for Kevin Puts’s The Brightness of Light. Massed choirs are ‘Chasing the Dawn’ in works by Richard Strauss and Lili Boulanger, while the opening night features Verdi’s Requiem. Spoleto Festival USA Charleston, SC, 23 May – 8 June spoletousa.org Charleston’s multi-faceted festival is an omnivorous affair, welcoming Manual Cinema’s bold take on Macbeth as well as the aerial wizardry of Australian company Gravity and Other Myths. But, founded by composer Gian Carlo Menotti, music remains its beating heart, and Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw spooks Dock Street Theatre; cellist Alisa Weilerstein…

The remains of Wenceslaus – of ‘Good King’ fame, although he wasn’t technically a monarch – are interred at St Vitus Cathedral, within the Prague Castle complex. Wenceslaus (not Wenceslas, the ubiquitous misspelling) was a 10th-century Bohemian prince who was canonised after he was murdered by his brother. St Vitus became a popular medieval pilgrimage site and the relics, alongside the bronze statue in Wenceslas Square, are still widely revered. The eponymous 19th-century carol was written for the Feast of St Stephen – better-known as Boxing Day – and the traditional Czech anthem ‘Saint Wenceslas Chorale’ has been adapted by local composers Josef Suk and Pavel Haas.…

R Strauss Arabella Sara Jakubiak, Elena Tsallagova et al; Orchestra and Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin/Donald Runnicles; dir. Tobias Kratzer (Berlin 2023) Naxos DVD: 2.110774; Blu-ray: NBD0182V 160 mins Tobias Kratzer’s Berlin Arabella, part of a Strauss triptych, has made me think long and hard about the paradoxes and contrary pulls of the composer and his ‘house poet’ Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and it ends up deeply moving, too. We start in 1860s Vienna and the impecunious Waldners living beyond their means. Camera operators stalk the split stage, sometimes projecting black-and-white period detail: an irritant, though the singing-acting of the cast is excellent. Act 2 enthrals: for Strauss’s messy Viennese carnival ball, composed after the writer’s death, Kratzer shows a corridor outside the dance-hall as time tunnel, moving through 1920s…

Ravel Fragments Works by Ravel, Tansman et al Bertrand Chamayou (piano) Erato 2173260123 58:31 mins Ravel was a fastidious composer, but not a very accomplished pianist: biographer Roger Nichols quotes the daunting review that ‘only a supreme ironist would consent to play his own beautiful music in public as badly as Ravel plays it’. But Ravel nevertheless made keyboard transcriptions of his orchestral works, including fragments from Daphnis et Chloé, which the marvellous pianist Bertrand Chamayou (who has already recorded all Ravel’s original piano music) has now assembled into an imaginative collection of original and tribute pieces, including a couple of his own new transcriptions. With most of the 15 tracks two or three minutes long, I feared this would be a bitty collection, but I reckoned without Chamayou’s meticulous…

1. In 1705, which composer walked 250 miles to the city of Lübeck to hear the organist and composer Dieterich Buxtehude play? 2. And to which author’s Dorset house did Gustav Holst walk from Cheltenham for inspiration for his tone poem Egdon Heath? 3. Who composed the following operas: a) La sonnambula (The Sleepwalker; 1831); b) Dead Man Walking (2000)? 4. Berlioz said that his Harold in Italy for viola and orchestra was inspired by ‘my wanderings in the Abruzzi’ and by which poet’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage? 5. Who composed the orchestral piece Walking the Dog (Promenade) for the 1937 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film Shall We Dance? 6. Which Italian tempo marking is often loosely translated in English as ‘at a walking pace’? 7. In the above silhouette…

This month, as modern-day Europe scrambles to rearm, we mark 80 years since VE Day – the Allies’ formal acceptance of Germany’s unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. The battles of World War II extended far beyond tanks and bullets, of course, as those on both sides sought to win hearts and minds. For the British, music was seen as an essential means of boosting morale. And crucially, as Rob Ainsley writes on page 24, ‘Nothing was compulsory, nor were “enemy” composers banned.’ In this atmosphere of permissiveness, a flowering of British composition produced works as varied as Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony, Britten’s Peter Grimes and Tippett’s A Child of Our Time. The Nazi propaganda machine, on the other hand, was ‘more ruthlessly xenophobic’, as Erik Levi writes on page…

The most important film composer of the 20th century and beyond? Williams? Guðnadóttir? Steiner? I have another candidate: Charles Spencer Chaplin. Chaplin wrote, directed and starred in his films, from The Kid to The Great Dictator, and changed the iconography of the 20th century forever. But he was also a composer who wrote and controlled a great deal of the music for his movies, in and out of the silent era. Yet for many, Chaplin’s work as a composer still requires a caveat: he didn’t actually ‘write’ the scores because he wasn’t trained to read music; and he needed a team of arrangers to realise his musical dreams. It’s an argument filled with hypocrisy: no one says to Paul McCartney that he’s ‘not a composer’ because he can’t read music;…

I cannot think about the 80th anniversary of VE Day without remembering my late mother and father. On 8 May 1945 they were 19 and 21 years old. My mother was training to be a teacher. My father was in a tank, part of the British Army’s 11th Armoured Division that had grimly fought its way across Belgium and Germany. By May 1945 each had lost a brother in the war. Other brothers were still involved in the conflict in the Far East, where the war continued until August. One, captured by the Japanese, never returned. The joy on the streets of British cities on VE Day, chronicled in so many newsreels and photographs, was not fake – but it masked a terrible sadness. Despite the war, music-making had continued.…

It was Victor de Laveleye, an exiled politician from Nazi-occupied Belgium, who in 1941 thought of using the letter ‘V’ as a rallying symbol for his country – an idea he was able to promote as an announcer for the BBC’s Radio Belgique service. It quickly took off, not just in Belgium but across the rest of occupied Europe; plus Britain, too, where the BBC launched a ‘V for Victory’ campaign. Rather fortuitously, the letter ‘V’ in Morse Code – dot-dot-dot-dash – had the same rhythm as the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony which, as the BBC continued to bombard the European airwaves, rapidly became adopted as the symbol’s aural equivalent. As well as appearing on the radio with increased regularity, Beethoven’s familiar ‘Da da da Dum’ also…

I’ve wanted to write a biography of the pianist Dame Myra Hess for as long as I can remember. Certainly, since my mother, who was also named Myra, first told me about the National Gallery lunchtime concerts that Hess ran during World War II, bolstering the people’s morale while under attack. These ran on weekdays for six-and-a-half years, weaponising the love of music into an act of resistance. The crowds flocked to Trafalgar Square, with attendances of well over a thousand, come rain, shine or bombs. It proved beyond doubt the deep, human need for great music, even – or especially – at the worst of times. ‘IT IS SAID SOMETIMES THAT MUSIC IS A FORM OF ESCAPE,’ Hess noted when the series closed in 1946, ‘but the experience of…

It would be simplistic and even trite to claim that art saves us or makes all our problems go away. Some trauma is too profound. But sometimes it can be part of a journey through that trauma. This is the case for cellist Matthew Barley, whose own mental health issues began at school, were buried for decades, and re-emerged last year in the cathartic form of Light Stories. Alone on stage save for the box of electronic tricks beneath his feet, and with the background video art of a man dancing and writhing, he plays a programme ranging from JS Bach to his own compositions, itself formed around the structure of ‘voyage and return’. The project made its debut last year with the release of an album and performances at…

Welcome! What would the warm summer months be without a glorious array of music-making? Thankfully we don’t have to find out – all over the world in 2025, festivals large and small have pulled out the stops to present a wealth of creative, collaborative, provocative and polished programming, in everything from Renaissance riches to contemporary classics-in-the-making. Want charming chamber music in an intimate medieval setting? Look no further than Kent’s JAM on the Marsh. Epic opera in a Finnish castle more your thing? Head over to Savonlinna’s 550-year-old fortress on the lake. How about picnics and music under the stars? The mountain-wreathed Sun Valley Pavilion in Idaho has you covered. No matter your tastes, fabulous music festival treats await you this summer!…

Imagine, if you can, that you know only the music of Jean Sibelius and Gustav Mahler – nothing of the men that wrote it. Imagine I then tell you that one of these men (Composer A) was a strict disciplinarian, ran a tight ship professionally and financially, balanced his day job and creative life to nearperfection, was as exacting in his personal life as in his work, and never drank or otherwise indulged to excess. I then tell you that the other (Composer B) was a needy, womanising emotional mess, with a terrifying alcohol dependency, who spent money like water and who sometimes had to be propped up at his desk by his heroically patient wife in a desperate effort to get him to finish a piece on time. He…

The composer Remarkably, although Ralph Vaughan Williams was in his mid-60s at the time of composing Dona Nobis Pacem, five of his nine symphonies were still to come. That said, there was already enough in his portfolio to ensure his place in the pantheon of British composing greats, not least his groundbreaking Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis of 1910 and, four years later, The Lark Ascending. His bursting CV also included years spent collecting folksongs and editing The English Hymnal in the early part of the 20th century and, away from the sphere of music, serving as a stretcher bearer in World War I. Building a Library is broadcast on Radio 3 at 3.30pm each Saturday as part of Record Review. A highlights podcast is available on BBC…

You may be surprised to read that putting these pages together is not an exact science – how can it be, with so many new (and old) recordings sent our way to consider? That said, I do like to think I put at least some thought into how things land, while others are happy accidents. It is no accident that there is a shedload of Shostakovich, from a symphony to three quartets (our Recording of the Month) via a rare song cycle; or indeed a bounty of Bach (which is always a good idea) and a pair of must-listen Mahler symphonies (Paavo Järvi’s new Fifth is very special). I have, though, accidentally assembled one of the most global selections possible, with at least 23 countries represented by ensembles and artists…

Mahler Symphony No. 5 Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich/Paavo Järvi Alpha Classics ALPHA1127 71:31 mins Every time a new recorded Mahler cycle is heralded, you (I) groan about yet another one, but then – in the recent cases of Czech Philharmonic/Bychkov, Minnesota/Vänskä and now Tonhalle Zurich/Paavo Järvi – you’re hooked the minute you start listening by the attention to detail, the newly revealed textures, the different sounds. I’ll go for broke and say I don’t know a better Mahler Fifth than this one, since in addition to Järvi’s care over every dynamic, there’s a sense of live electric charge which makes the ends of the Scherzo and Finale above all hair-raisingly brilliant. In the first movement, bassoons especially illuminate perfect balances, strings singing the vocal funeral marches, while in the second Mahler’s extravagant…

Attende domine – Music for Lent & Passiontide Works by Byrd, Mendelssohn, Poulenc et al The Bevan Family Consort Signum Classics SIGCD892 69:18 mins The latest offering from the Bevan Family Consort is an album of varied choral works composed for Lent and Passiontide. These are singers whose childhoods were steeped in Catholic church music, and many pieces featured have personal significance to them, not least a dramatic, unsettling setting of Psalm 21 by David Bevan (father to several performers, uncle to others) and a Good Friday piece called The Reproaches by Colin Mawby, choir director at Westminster Cathedral and a family friend. Some of the pieces are recorded here for the first time: not only newer works, but also extraordinary, long-forgotten ones by the Renaissance composers Girolamo Giacobbi, Andrea…

ICA Classics always delivers when it comes to great archive recordings and Leopold Stokowski, Vol. 2 (ICA Classics ICAB 5183) is no different. Its six discs feature remastered reissues of three of its brilliant ‘BBC Legends’ releases, with the remaining discs featuring Stokowski treasures on CD for the first time. All are BBC recordings, with the ‘new’ items taken from broadcast recordings with the Philharmonia, London Symphony and BBC Symphony orchestras. The whole set is comprised of performances Stokowski conducted in his final decade and a half, with a 1974 Dvořák No. 9 the latest. It’s a great set of stereo recordings, featuring chunky works by Beethoven, Ravel and a host of Russian composers. Eugene Ormandy served as Stokowski’s co-director at the Philadelphia Orchestra, taking over full time in 1938.…

Sian Williams’s 40-year career in TV and radio news included waking the nation on BBC Breakfast for over a decade. These days, she splits her time between broadcasting and working as a counselling psychologist, specialising in anxiety, stress and trauma. She can be heard on Classical Unwind each morning on Radio 3 Unwind and on Radio 4’s popular series Life Changing. We know that there are physical processes going on in our body and in our brain when we listen to music. It stimulates the reward centre of our brain – called the nucleus accumbens – especially when it’s bittersweet, nostalgic or has an emotional connection. My Grandad (or ‘Taid’ in Welsh) lived in a vicarage in Oswestry on the Wales-England border. He was a Presbyterian minister and organist, a…

Rob Ainsley Music and travel writer ‘Along with British Library trips and author interviews, my research into the music of WWII Britain involved watching several films with a periodwitness source who has unprintably funny opinions on them: my 91-year-old mum…’ Page 24 Erik Levi Music professor and writer ‘Perennially fascinating for me is the degree to which the Nazi propaganda machine harnessed classical music as a potent cultural weapon for softening up populations in the countries occupied during wartime.’ Page 30 Jessica Duchen Journalist, author and librettist ‘Myra Hess became a national heroine for her National Gallery concerts in World War II. Writing my new biography of her, though, I’ve been discovering the real Myra: complex, idealistic and indomitable, just for a start…’ Page 36…

Sofia Gubaidulina Born 1931 Composer Born into an atheist family that believed firmly in Soviet values, Sofia Gubaidulina would go on to compose music that expressed her strong Christian faith and thumbed its nose at the Soviet authorities. Adventurous both in technique and in instrumentation – the Russian bayan, the Japanese koto and various types of percussion were all parts of her armoury – Gubaidulina was also prolific and wide-ranging as a composer, her output including many acclaimed film scores and music for children’s cartoons. Her many champions, meanwhile, included Shostakovich, who encouraged her to ignore criticism and continue on the path she was treading as a young composer, and the violinist Gidon Kremer, whose worldwide performances of her Offertorium for violin and orchestra in the early 1980s helped to spread…

Bach/Hess Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (1928) Created just three years before she first recorded it, this transcription was Hess’s smash hit. Listen for her open sound, her detailed control of voicing and her playing’s remarkable state of grace. Schumann Carnaval (1938) Carl Friedberg, to whom Hess regularly played in the US, may have given her tips from his teachers, Clara Schumann and Brahms. This wonderfully characterised cavalcade is one of few recordings with which Hess was pleased. Chopin Fantaisie in F minor (Live at University of Illinois, 1949) A fire-and-brimstone account with a depth of colour, texture and pure drama resembling a canvas by Chopin’s friend Delacroix. If this is how Hess played in concert, her studio recordings misrepresent her… Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 (New York Philharmonic/Bruno Walter, 1951) A performance…

Matthew Barley started his own foundation in 2022, bringing creative musical play to university settings to support students with mental health problems. The workshops involve three days of creating new music and discussing mental health, culminating in a performance of Light Stories. They are still in their pilot form – the final pilot takes place this month at University College London. ‘I find myself talking more and more about how important creativity is,’ says Barley. ‘Young children spend large parts of their day, if not all day, making stuff up – whether it’s conversations, songs or games. They are so endlessly creative. In a practical sense, creativity is part of the human condition. It’s just what we all do.’ He describes the outcome of a recent workshop: ‘I said to…

Multitudes Festival Southbank Centre, London, 23 April – 3 May southbankcentre.co.uk ‘Reimagining the concert experience’ is what London’s newest festival is all about, and that reimagining pairs the Southbank Centre’s resident ensembles with artists working across all genres. Aurora Orchestra teams up with theatre company Frantic Assembly for the world premiere of Richard Ayres’s Dr Frompou’s Anatomical Study of an Orchestra; London Sinfonietta marks Terry Riley’s 90th birthday with a danced performance of In C; the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra dives into Grime and Hip-Hop; and Mahler’s ‘Symphony of 1000’ sets the Southbank ablaze. Tectonics  Glasgow, 3, 4 May tectonicsfestival.com ‘Why Tectonics?’ asks conductor Ilan Volkov, curator of a festival that has been dispensing challenge and enlightenment to Glasgow for over a decade now. His answer? ‘It’s a word…

Tempo Sibelius’s (left) love of nature permeates his music, but it goes deeper than mood or simple tonepainting. For instance, wind and water don’t move at regular, steady speeds, and his music reflects that increasingly as he develops. Different strands in the texture can seem to be moving at different tempos, like ocean cross-currents, the eddies of a river or the interplay of breezes through tree canopies. Form Sibelius starts out rooted in classical forms, especially sonata form and rondo, but in time these begin to blur, until he arrives at something that seems to be continuously evolving. Elements of slow movement, scherzo and allegro can be heard in his last symphony, No. 7, but where are the boundaries? It’s wonderfully seamless. Harmony Dissonance was on the rise in music…

Matthew Best (conductor) Thomas Allen (baritone), Judith Howarth (soprano); Corydon Orchestra, Corydon Singers Hyperion CDA66655 Some conductors justifiably lean into the public nature and moral stature of Vaughan Williams’s anti-war statement, and if that’s how you see the work, then Richard Hickox’s powerful recording may well be the one for you (see ‘Three other great recordings’, above right). But Vaughan Williams believed in the individuality of his own artistic voice – listening to Verdi’s Requiem had taught him, he said, the importance of the motto ‘To thine own self be true’. Personal conviction fuels his Dona Nobis Pacem, and that impulse is beautifully captured by Matthew Best and his Corydon Singers and Orchestra in this 1993 recording. Here, we are taken on a true musical journey, rather like the soul…

Shostakovich String Quartets Nos 2, 7 & 10 Jerusalem Quartet BIS BIS-2654 75:20 mins This recording is an absolute winner. As in its previous explorations of Shostakovich, primarily on the Harmonia Mundi label, the Jerusalem Quartet provides consummately brilliant playing throughout, combining amazing technical finesse with overwhelming musical insight. The Jerusalems invest every phrase with an exquisite range of nuances, and individual voices are both seamlessly blended and subtly calibrated to achieve a perfect balance of texture. In each performance, the players take us through a vast gamut of emotions, from loneliness and tender reflection to almost unbearable levels of neurosis and unbridled fury. Yet the flawless control that is exhibited throughout never sounds cold or calculating, and even on repeated listening, the playing yields a compelling spontaneity that is…

Saint-Saëns Violin Concertos Nos 1 & 2 etc Leia Zhu (violin); ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra/Howard Griffiths Berlin Classics 0303539BC 61:23 mins This is quite a debut. British violinist Leia Zhu may already be a veteran of the concert stage at the ripe old age of 18, but this release, recorded in November 2023, is her first album. Requiring exceptional virtuosity allied to clean musical textures and utmost refinement, Saint-Saëns’s works for violin and orchestra are a test for any performer, but Zhu is comfortably up to the challenges they pose. This initial volume of a projected complete survey features the first two concertos framed by scintillating performances of two of the composer’s best-known standalone pieces, the Introduction et rondo capriccioso and Havanaise. Zhu tears into the First Concerto with…

Dvořák • Price Dvořák: Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major; Price: Piano Quintet in A minor Marc-André Hamelin (piano); Takács Quartet Hyperion CDA68433 67:06 mins Florence Price’s music is coming increasingly to the fore and all credit to the Takács Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin for recording her eminently rewarding Piano Quintet. Composed in the 1930s, the quintet – apparently discovered by accident in an attic – inhabits a late-Romantic world, more than a little tinged by Dvořák’s ‘American’ style, though skilfully put together and melodically attractive. But for all its undoubted qualities, the work is out of kilter with a large-scale opening movement outbalancing the remaining three, a pity since the brief finale is in many ways the most imaginative part of the work. Hamelin and the Takács are…

Dreaming in Ensemble Lucy Caplan Harvard 336pp £29.95 If you believe that Marian Anderson singing Ulrica in Il Trovatore at The Met on 7 January 1956 was a first for operatic Black Americans then Lucy Caplan’s Dreaming in Ensemble will put you right. In a scrupulously researched history, she argues that in the 20th century ‘through creative acts of transgression and imagination African Americans redefined opera as a well-spring of aesthetic innovation, collective sociality and anti-racist activism.’ While Black singers may have been barred from singing on stage, they were there as supernumeraries, particularly in America’s favourite Verdi, Aida, and foot soldiers in the behind-scenes army that gets an opera on stage. In their own lives they took singing classes, performed operas from the white Western canon, were impresarios, music…