FROM ROME: Keep in touch with the Italian opera and classical music scene by reading Giuseppe Pennisi's regular reports.
SPONSORED: Ensemble. Unjustly Neglected - In this specially extended feature, Armstrong Gibbs' re-discovered 'Passion according to St Luke' impresses Roderic Dunnett.
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VIDEO PODCAST: Slava Ukraini! - recorded on 24 February 2022, the day the world woke up to the news that Vladimir Putin's Russian forces had invaded Ukraine. A fifty minute video which also features Caitríona O'Leary and Eric Fraad discussing their new film Island of Saints, and pays tribute to Joseph Horovitz, Malcolm Troup and Maria Nockin.
Azerbaijani composer Arif Melikov was born on 13 September 1933. He studied composition at Baku Conservatory and became well-known in 1958, just three years after graduating, when his ballet Legend of Love (based on the legend of 'Farhad and Shirin') was staged at the Kirov State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet and was acclaimed by Shostakovich and throughout the former Soviet Union. The ballet has also been staged in other European countries.
Melikov's output included two further ballets, eight symphonies, ten symphonic poems and scores for many films and plays.
He became a People's Artist of the USSR, and a concert hall at Bilkent University in Turkey was named after him.
Following Azerbaijan's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Melikov settled in Baku and taught music at the State Conservatoire.
He died on 9 May 2019, aged eighty-five.