Have you ever wondered why they call it the long 19th century? From Beethoven’s hammering martellatos, to Wagner’s massive, veiny works that seem to last forever, to Liszt’s immense hand size (…), the Romantic period was in many ways a musical virility contest with many—many—climaxes. But there was one composer who critics considered the most […]
Category: Rankings & Roundups
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Every Maria Callas Role, Ranked
In honor of Maria Callas’s centennial (which, depending on who you ask, will be either this Saturday, Sunday, or Monday), Warner Classics has released “La Divina: Maria Callas in All Her Roles,” a ten-pound box set comprising 131 CDs (plus a handful of Blu-Rays). If you were to listen to all of these recordings—from the […]
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Rising to a Crescendo
When news broke of Martin Amis’s death in May, I ordered a copy of his essay collection The War Against Cliché, and set about learning how to write. As it turned out, some of the Amisian impulse to strike cliché from the page was already there. For the past few years, I have compiled my […]
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The Opera Fuckboy Matrix
What, exactly, is a fuckboy? When I asked people on what remains of classical Twitter to tell me about their favorite fuckboys in opera, the responses I received showed that, even after a nearly-decade-old debate around the word’s manifold meanings and usage, we’ve yet to reach a consensus. I’m not here to define the fuckboy. […]
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Every Bach Cantata, Ranked
After ranking the complete Scarlatti sonatas and Schubert songs, you might think I’d have learned my lesson, both in time spent and in baffled—or worse—reactions received. Still, I admit when I decided to take on ranking the complete Bach Cantatas, I was a little naive about the time commitment required. With fairly regular listening, this […]
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The Most Deserved Deaths in Opera, Ranked
There are countless rankings of the best deaths in opera that grade by the most memorable (“La Bohème,” “La Traviata”), the most epic (“Dialogues of the Carmelites,” “Götterdämmerung”), and the most difficult to stage (“La Wally,” “La Juive”). All of those criteria are well and good, but what I want—what I really, really want—in an […]
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Ten of the Best Composer Love Letters
People often look to classical music for Valentine’s Day inspiration. Which is great, unless your inspiration is Carlo Gesualdo. While there are plenty of bad mixes (and one actually good classical music for sex playlist), looking directly into the private lives and letters of composers also offers a trove of possibilities for everyone from your […]
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The Sex Lives of Women Composers, Ranked
We are regularly bombarded with information about Schumann’s syphilis, Mozart’s interest in rimming, and Tchaikovsky’s unfortunate love for his nephew. But what about the kinky exploits of women composers in history? In the name of gender equality in music, I have ranked the sex lives of 30 women composers in absolutely objective order of worst […]
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Cooking the 1988 Metropolitan Opera Cookbook
In the summer of 2022, a second-hand bookshop in Oslo was having its closing sale. In the very back, past the classical music biographies and encyclopedias, Aksel found The Metropolitan Opera Cookbook (1988). He dropped everything and took to Twitter, and a few weeks later, amid Kevin’s transatlantic move to New York City, they once […]
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Every Olympics “Carmen” Performance, Ranked
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a figure skater in possession of an Olympics program, must be in want of a “Carmen.” Mirroring its ubiquity in opera houses season after season, it’s hard to think of a Winter Olympics in the last 50 years that hasn’t included at least one singles competitor or pair […]