Angela Gheorghiu

Jennifer Hamilton, the new head of vocal studies at Trinity Laban Conservatoire, outlines the challenges that face aspiring young opera singers today and sets out some of the initiatives that she will be carrying forward to ensure that students have the skills and versatility to thrive in a rapidly changing profession

It has been six years since Angela Gheorghiu recorded a new album. The release of Eternamente sees the prima donna in her prime – full of self-determined confidence and still at the top of her game when the occasion calls. Claire Jackson was in Sicily preparing for an audience with the diva, when the phone rang unexpectedly…

With new creative and administrative teams at the helm, along with world-class casting, first-rate conductors and a raft of freshly minted commissions and world premieres, this is an exciting time for opera lovers in the Nordic countries. Andrew Mellor takes stock of all the recent changes in the region, with plenty of fresh thinking in place for the future

Andrew Mellor reports from the Copenhagen Opera Festival which, under its new artistic director, Peter Lodahl, is moving opera out of its traditional comfort zone and on to the streets, into public squares and along the waterways of the Danish capital

Lost Is My Quiet is a new recital disc of duets and solos by Purcell, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Quilter performed by soprano Carolyn Sampson, countertenor Iestyn Davies and pianist Joseph Middleton. George Hall talks to the artists about their programme and the art of duetting

Hamish Mackay is a young impresario who has founded his own company, The Opera Story, to explore how contemporary opera can address classic narratives and fairy-tales for modern audiences. He explains why he is so passionate in his support of powerful storytelling using music

Having set out with modest ambitions to become a music teacher, British baritone Roderick Williams has found himself almost unwittingly thrust into the international limelight thanks to his versatility and charm as a singer, along with the dramatic intelligence he brings to everything he performs, from Schubert Lieder to operas by Monteverdi, Puccini and Britten

The Spanish tenor Alfredo Kraus (1927-99) was an opera star like no other, building a long and varied career on his own terms and in his own way. Preferring the comforts of home over international celebrity, he achieved the latter anyway, bringing a keen intelligence and courtly elegance to the roles he performed

A casual remark by her mother set author Yvonne Rogers on a lifechanging hunt to discover whether one of the greatest opera singers in history was actually her great-grandmother. The result of years of painstaking research is a new biography which aims to settle the question