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In recent months, financial services company Northwestern Mutual has used the chorus from a song by the Americana band “The Avett Brothers” in a commercial about managed wealth. The song, “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise”… more

No one in Europe could be indifferent to Napoleon’s ascent. He was its greatest liberator or its greatest threat. Beethoven, who despised ruling classes, was wildly enthusiastic about him. His manuscript for the Third Symphony, the… more

On December 24 and 25, 1989, Leonard Bernstein led concerts celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall. They included Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, in which solo singers and a chorus present part of Friedrich Schiller’s “An… more

Todd Field’s Tár, nominated for six Oscars, is a beautiful but densely constructed film that expects much of its audience and explains little. The movie assumes a familiarity with the world of classical music, and viewers must… more

The Nazis made Richard Wagner a national hero. Hitler loved his music, and Germany made the Bayreuth Music Festival a center of Nazi propaganda. Goebbels called Die Meistersinger “the most German of all German operas.” Today, many… more

Louis XIV of France was a renowned patron of the arts. He provided extravagant royal funds for theater, architecture, dance, and music. Artists who won his favor lived very well. Those without royal connections, though, found it… more

Our modern picture of Johann Sebastian Bach is lopsided. He wrote both secular and religious vocal music, but much more of the latter survived. It’s unquestionable that his Christian beliefs inspired him to write some of the… more

Giuseppe Verdi’s operas present drama and conflict, heightened by his superb music. Like most opera composers, he didn’t write his own texts but employed several different librettists. In his most successful ones, he worked with the… more

The Protestant Reformation threw 16th-century Europe into turmoil. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was also the king of Spain, tried to maintain Catholic power in the face of religious schisms. Suffering from poor health and worn… more

When Mozart wanted to make his name known to Vienna’s opera-going public, he made a daring choice. He had Lorenzo Da Ponte write a libretto based on a controversial play by Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. Like the play, the… more

Beethoven’s opera Fidelio, which dates from 1805, addresses issues which are just as important today. Its plot concerns a whistleblower whom a corrupt prison governor has “disappeared.” His wife, Leonore, disguises herself as a… more