Canadian-born Mel Cooper first came to the UK to study English Literature at Oxford University and stayed. He was captivated by the culture and history of Britain, which he found to be a welcoming and tolerant country. After working in highly illustrated, non-fiction publishing for over a decade, he founded and edited the magazine Opera Now. Since then he has worked as a consultant to the Japanese broadcaster NHK, a broadcaster on British Satellite Broadcasting, a maker of audio shows and arts critic for several airlines, and as one of the team that started Britain’s first commercial classical music radio station, Classic FM, on which he was both a classical music DJ and creator and presenter of shows like Classic America and Authentic
Performance. Throughout this period, he also lectured in music and literature in London and Oxford and published short stories in Canada. After working with the Genesis Foundation on helping to fund arts projects, he continues to write, review and lecture on music and literature. His first novel has just been published as an e-book. The title is City of Dreams. It is the first volume of a projected saga called The Dream Bearers. You can find the Kindle version of the book on Amazon.
The Longborough Festival Opera is performing the opera Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City) by Erich Wolfgang Korngold in what they call a semi-staged conc...
Henry James when talking about reviewing books or music or drama was insistent that one must start by accepting “the given”. So when reviewing a Wagne...
The Longborough Opera Festival ends its season every year with a show that highlights young professionals just starting their careers in opera, and th...
This truly important production of the Monteverdi early (1641) opera Il Ritorno d’Ullise in Patria (Ulysses Returns Home) is a captivating piece of br...
I’ve just been watching the streaming of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore from the Met
and wish it was going to be up for another week or more! That woul...
If you have any interest at all in the world and music of Queen, if you like good rock of any sort, then this show is, as a friend of mine used to say...
My first impression of The Whip, newly commissioned from Juliet Gilkes Romero by the RSC, was that it was a sensitive, intelligent and intentionally t...
