WFMT host LaRob K. Rafael visited Haymarket rehearsals, hearing musical rehearsal highlights and talking with two of the production’s stars: countertenor Bejun Mehta and mezzo-soprano Emily Fons.

Baroque music goes digital.

Little known fact: Handel ranked ‘Theodora’ — not ‘Messiah’ — as his best oratorio. You’ll see why in a rapturous performance by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

It’s Baroque opera, minus the sobriety. The serious operas of Handel and Gluck get the parody treatment in this excerpt from the 1737 opera The Dragon of Wantley performed by Haymarket Opera Company!

NEW YORK (AP) — “When I am laid in earth,” the heroine sings just before she dies at the end of Henry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas.” Rarely will the aria be heard in a more fittingly sepulchral setting than when the hour-long opera, composed in the 1680s, is performed this week in the catacombs of Brooklyn’s historic Green-Wood Cemetery. The …

“With this kind of comedy, there is no fourth wall. We’re very aware of the audience; we’re not pretending they’re not there.”

How does an opera written in 1735 hold up today? Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production of George Frideric Handel’s Ariodante presents a contemporary perspective on the nearly 300-year-old Baroque opera, with updated gender and sexual politics to boot.

This article was originally published on February 23, 2016.

Have you ever wondered how opera singers are able to sing so many notes so easily? Mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux shares her secrets to singing coloratura.

Maestro Harry Bicket shared what’s in his “little box of tricks” to help musicians in modern orchestras sound period perfect.

“Ariane et Bachus” was first performed by the Académie Royale de Musique in 1696, and Haymarket Opera Company’s production marks the first revival of work in 321 years.

When exploring the jungles of South America, perhaps one of the last things you would expect to find are centuries old scores by European composers like Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Bassani, and Hasse. But that’s exactly what Father Piotr Nawrot encountered in Jesuit Missions located in modern-day Bolivia, along with the score to an opera, San Ignacio, which receives its Midwestern premiere …

“Telemann has written… some truly funny arias about Don Q.’s dreams of chivalry and Sancho’s donkey and mishaps”

Pieces of music that turned the art form into something it hadn’t seen.