Classical 101 Podcasts

Welcome to Opera Abbreviated, your very own series of podcasts designed to give you a pithy sense of the operas being presented by the Metropolitan Opera's Live in HD series. A new production of Giuseppe Verdi's Otello is presented live from the Met on October 17.

The Metropolitan's Opera's live in HD season gets underway this weekend with Giuseppe Verdi's Il trovatore. Opera Abbreviated will be your well-intended-- if cheeky-- guide to the operas on offer by the Met.

On this week’s episode of our series on video game music, we’ll listen to the music of two beautifully-crafted games – Child of Light and Journey.

Think video games are just for teenage boys? Think again – video games are a massive industry that are producing a huge variety of incredible music that we’ll explore throughout this five-part series.

How tall was Mozart? What color were his eyes? Did he ever pretend to be a cat?

In the final year of his life, Mozart composed his piano variations on the aria Ein Weib ist das herrlichste Ding – “A Wife Is the Most Glorious Thing” – from a Singspiel by his friend the singer and composer Benedikt Schack.

Judging solely from Mozart’s correspondence, Schack’s aria could easily have served as Mozart’s personal theme song.

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be," said Polonius to his young adult son, Laertes, in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Personalities being what they are, Mozart was evidently a borrower.

His genius secured his immortality despite his untimely death. His Requiem - ironically unfinished at his death - he believed he was composing for his own funeral.

Mozart may have been pursued by intimations of his own mortality, but he wasn't haunted by the idea of death. However, the death of his father, Leopold Mozart, may well have been a different story.

Water tripping in endless currents. Passion, love and anguish glowing red. East joining West in an exotic fusion of motion and color.  

These are the ingredients of central Ohio composer Ching-chu Hu's string quartet The Swash of Water and Red, selections from which will air on the Columbus Arts Festival edition of The American Sound Saturday, June 13 at 6 p.m. and Tuesday, June 16 at 7 p.m. on Classical 101.

By the time Mozart turned 30, his success as a composer was undeniable. But that didn't stop him from hitting up his friends for cash.

More than 200 years after its premiere, Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro remains one of the best-loved comic operas in the repertoire. And if you think people like Figaro today, you should have seen - and heard - the audiences in Mozart's day.

Picture it: Mozart at a masquerade ball gussied up as an ancient Middle Eastern prophet and spouting a made-up philosophy of riddles and off-color aphorisms.

Too silly even for Mozart? Nope.

In a month full to bursting with concerts, Mozart's waistband might also have stretched a bit during February 1785 from all the fabulous food he enjoyed.