Before he wrote “Microsoft Outlook 2016 for Dummies” and starred in cabaret shows he wrote, Bill Dyszel made a life-changing discovery as a freshman at Palatine High School. “I had no musical ...

This year’s event took place on January 25 and 26th and featured five teams. On Friday night, composers and lyricists (librettists) were randomly paired and given 12 hours to compose 7-to-10 minute ...

Trying to understand the depth of opera in one class can be daunting for anybody. Carolina D'Souza gives it a try. Opera for Dummies, the book and the idea, has been exhausted. Yet I find myself ...

The proper etiquette for opera is a little less obvious than the etiquette for musicals and general concerts. So, I did what came naturally -- I consulted "Opera for Dummies" by David Pogue and Scott ...

Already the musical leader of the Joffrey Ballet, the Mobile (Alabama) Symphony Orchestra, and the Muskegon-based West Michigan Symphony, Scott Speck was named the new artistic director of the Chicago ...

Before embarking on an opera tour to Europe, I searched for an Opera for Dummies but to no avail. Fortunately, a friend loaned me The Virgin Guide to Classical Music. So this virgin set off to learn ...

--Over a span of about 30 years, the composer Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti wrote 75 operas, 16 symphonies, 19 string quartets and dozens of other songs, sonatas and such. "That just blows my mind, ...

Famous writers have been poking fun at the extravagances of opera ever since the Original Fat Lady took her first bow. “We went to Mannheim,” Mark Twain wrote in 1879, “and attended a shivaree – ...

On Friday, David Pogue is making his opera debut. Pogue is a well-known technology writer who made his name during 13 years at the New York Times before leaving to found the Web site Yahoo Tech. In ...

The shortened version of La Bohème was staged for the first time in Perugia: it lasts ninety minutes instead of two hours and forty minutes. The new format is the idea of tenor Gianluca Terranova, who ...