Guardian Music — AS Byatt's contribution to Canongate's series on myths and legends takes the Norse apocalypse Ragnarok and triumphantly forges it anewStories begin when characters set out on their travels and end when they arrive at a destination or return wearily h... more info

Guardian Music — Opera is thrilling, vibrant, versatile – and thriving. In fact, there has never been a better time to fall in love with the art formRichard Wagner, that shameless schmoozer, self-publicist, serial womaniser, fetishist, antisemite and torturer of th... more info

Guardian Music — Vogt/Struckman/Holl/Dalayman/Netherlands Radio Choir & PO/Van Zweden (Challenge Classics, four SACDs and DVD)Valery Gergiev's recording of Parsifal, taken from concert performances in St Petersburg, was one of last year's outstanding new releases, a... more info

Guardian Music — Byström/Osborn/Finley/Cigni/Orchestra and Chorus of the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia/Pappano (EMI, 3CDs)Antonio Pappano and his Academia di Santa Cecilia forces scored a notable success with Rossini's vast libertarian opera at this year's Pro... more info

Guardian Music — Today, an Israeli orchestra will be the first ever to perform at Bayreuth. Stephen Moss talks to the musicians risking controversyThe hot ticket in Bayreuth on Tuesday will not be Die Meistersinger in the Festspielhaus, but an orchestral concert at t... more info

The Independent — An Israeli orchestra is set to perform a work by Adolf Hitler's favourite composer, Richard Wagner, in a taboo-breaking concert in Germany. more info

Guardian Music — It is banal to suggest his music promotes antisemitism, but the Israel Chamber Orchestra's Bayreuth performance mattersA small orchestra plays a small piece of music in a small town in Germany. Hardly the stuff of headlines around the world, you may ... more info

Guardian Music — Longborough, Moreton-in-MarshAs Longborough Festival Opera reaches the third stage in its Ring cycle, it is once again a matter of wonder that any sense of Wagner's forbiddingly epic enormity is swept away by the essential clarity of director Alan Pr... more info

Guardian Music — Israel Chamber Orcestra will play Siegfried Idyll, challenging seven-decade taboo surrounding composer's antisemitic linksThe Israel Chamber Orchestra will play a work by Richard Wagner, Hitler's favourite composer, in Germany on Tuesday, challenging... more info

Guardian Music — Martin and Lizzie Thomas have busily been laying the foundations of what may in time become a British BayreuthEach year, at the end of July, lovers of the operas of Richard Wagner make the journey from around the world to the composer's own theatre i... more info