This week saw the opening of an exhibition on women composers in Vienna. It follows a run of performances Of Baruchs Schweigen – or Baruch’s Silence, by the composer Ella Milch-Scheriff with a… Continue reading →

  I wrote a catalogue chapter on the persecution of popular music during the Nazi years for the exhibition Stars of David currently running at Vienna’s Jewish Museum. Obviously, in a catalogue, there… Continue reading →

“History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme” – a quote apocryphally attributed to Mark Twain. So what does this historic meter reflecting events start to show us? It’s thrown up many… Continue reading →

On April 22nd, I gave a lecture at Royal Holloway London University, on Karol Rathaus’s opera Fremde Erde – Alien Soil. I’ve now adapted it for inclusion on this blog. Much of the… Continue reading →

Born in Ternopol in 1895 as an Austrian who spoke Polish at home, educated in German, he spoke and wrote the language better than native speakers, as did his fellow Ukrainian/Austrian Poles and… Continue reading →

There are many reasons why it has taken me some time to write on this blog. There is a new posting on the way, but in the meantime, an important event needs announcing… Continue reading →

Say Viennese operetta to anyone and they most likely think of Johann Strauss or Franz Lehár. In any case, both Fledermaus and Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) have pushed their way into… Continue reading →

Daniel Spitzer, unfamiliar to English readers, was an Austrian sketch writer in 19th century Imperial Vienna’s paper of record, die Presse, then later relaunched as die Neue Freie Presse. I mention him once… Continue reading →

It’s been some time since I’ve written on this blog, and having just returned from a fascinating trip to the United States, there is a good deal to write about. All of this… Continue reading →

Every conference has its revelations. The one in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s lovely capital city Schwerin in early October 2015 was no different. After decades of researching material and believing that perhaps it was possible to… Continue reading →