Fewer and fewer are left now of the generation that had reached adulthood by the start of the Second World War. The youngest surviving American veteran of the world war is now aged 87. He was just 15 when he enlisted in the US Army. Still fewer are those who have long memories of life before ’39, when old Europe had not yet blasted to smithereens, and before the Shoah, before the many catastrophes across the world, and the annihilation of whole cities in Europe and beyond.
The success of the International Opera Awards is intellectual rigour
At the awards ceremony in Munich this year, a jury dug deep into the purpose of opera and its impact on society.