The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

Celebrating the Mackerras Centenary

18th November 2025

The Earl of Harewood – who knew a thing or two about such matters – once described Charles Mackerras as ‘probably the most complete opera conductor of his generation’. Across a career lasting more than six decades, Mackerras not only led performances of all the classics from Handel and Mozart to Verdi, Wagner and beyond, but revolutionised the approach to ornamentation in Baroque and Classical repertoire, championed the work of Benjamin Britten, and almost single-handedly introduced English-speaking audiences to the operas... read more

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Hommage à Jodie Devos: The Essential Collection

4th November 2025

The death on 18 June last year of the brilliant Belgian coloratura soprano Jodie Devos, at the age of just 35, robbed the operatic world of one of its brightest stars. At the time, we wrote of her ‘light, agile, brilliantly focussed voice... ideally suited to the operatic coloratura repertoire’, but the sheer range of repertoire she covered over the course of a career lasting barely a decade seems all the more astonishing in retrospect. From Rameau, Handel and Mozart, via Offenbach, Donizetti, Verdi, Thomas, Debussy and... read more

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Perceptual Labyrinths: Celebrating Luciano Berio

29th October 2025

Last Friday marked the centenary of one of the most fascinating and consistently absorbing of all 20th-century composers: Luciano Berio. Frequently regarded, together with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez, as part of the great triumvirate of post-war modernists, Berio was indeed part of the ‘Darmstadt set’ in the 1950s, but he retained a healthy scepticism of the more dogmatic attitudes associated with the Darmstadt school. Indeed, his avoidance of the doctrinaire, and his protean ability to take what he needed from... read more

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Label Focus: Palazzetto Bru Zane

21st October 2025

Regular readers of our weekly reviews will know that we at Europadisc are big fans of the recordings issued by the Bru Zane label, or (to give its full name) Palazzetto Bru Zane – Centre de musique romantique française (Centre for French Romantic music). Established as recently as 2009, this organisation is dedicated to the rediscovery and promotion of French music from 1780 to 1920: ‘the long 19th century’. It is best known to record buyers for its luxuriously presented, limited edition opera sets, but it covers much else... read more

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Tercentenary Focus: Alessandro Scarlatti

15th October 2025

Although his music is these days far less well-known than that of his son, Domenico, Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725) is a figure of considerable importance in the development of Italian Baroque music. The tercentenary of his death – which falls on 22 October – affords the opportunity to explore his life and output in greater depth. Older reference books routinely credited him as ‘founder of the Neapolitan School’ of opera, but in recent decades that assessment has been challenged. Although he did indeed spend much of his... read more

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