(Music Sales America). An opera written in 2006. Kaija Saariaho's La Passion de Simone was commissioned jointly by the Vienna Festival, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Barbican London and Lincoln Center New York. It was first performed on 26th November 2006 in Vienna as part of the New Crowned Hope Festival.

Kaija Saariaho’s Emilie Suite was a joint commission by Carnegie Hall, New York City, Cité de la Musique, Paris, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester and Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg. It was first performed on 30 November 2011 at Carnegie Hall by the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu, with Elizabeth Futral (soprano). The first performance in Paris took place on 23 April 2013 at Cité de la Musique by the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra conducted by Ernest Martinez Izquierdo, with Barbara Hannigan (soprano).

What makes Mozart's music so great? Why does a minor chord sound sad and a major chord sound happy? What's the difference between opera and operetta? From Bach to Bernstein, this definitive guide offers a complete survey of the history of classical music. Whether you already love classical music or you're just beginning to explore it, The Complete Classical Music Guide invites you to discover the spirituality of Byrd's masses, the awesome power of Handel's Messiah, and the wonders of Wagner's operas, as well as hundreds of more composers and their masterpieces. This guide takes you on a journey through more than 1,000 years, charting the evolution of musical instruments, styles, and genres. Biographies of major and lesser-known composers offer rich insights into their music and the historical and cultural contexts that influenced their genius. The book explores the features that defined each musical era - from the ornate brilliance of the Baroque, through the drama of Romantic music, to contemporary genres such as minimalism and electronic music. Timelines, quotes, and color photographs give a voice to this music and the exceptionally gifted individuals who created it.

Recognized as one of the most innovative and influential directors of our time, Peter Sellars has produced acclaimed—and often controversial—versions of many beloved operas and oratorios. He has also collaborated with several composers, including John C. Adams and Kaija Saariaho, to create challenging new operas. The Passions of Peter Sellars follows the development of his style, beginning with his interpretations of the Mozart-Da Ponte operas, proceeding to works for which he assembled the libretti and even the music, and concluding with his celebrated stagings of Bach’s passions with the Berlin Philharmonic. Many directors leave the musical aspects of opera entirely to the singers and conductor. Sellars, however, immerses himself in the score, and has created a distinctive visual vocabulary to embody musical gesture on stage, drawing on the energies of the music as he shapes characters, ensemble interaction, and large-scale dramatic trajectories. As a leading scholar of gender and music, and the history of opera, Susan McClary is ideally positioned to illuminate Sellars’s goal to address both the social tensions embodied in these operas as well as the spiritual dimensions of operatic performance. McClary considers Sellars’s productions of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte; Handel’s Theodora; Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise; John C. Adams’s Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, El Niño, and Doctor Atomic; Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de loin, La Passion de Simone, and Only the Sound Remains; Purcell’s The Indian Queen; and Bach’s passions of Saint Matthew and Saint John. Approaching Sellars’s theatrical strategies from a musicological perspective, McClary blends insights from theater, film, and literary scholarship to explore the work of one of the most brilliant living interpreters of opera.