Free Republic

Though she moves in the seemingly civilized, congenial world of Baroque music, soprano Julianne Baird has faced vehement booing in Belgium, helped change the history of Bach performance in Boston, and landed behind bars in Maryland. At age 50, this blond, sunny warrior from the front lines of the Handel opera revival discusses these things laughingly. "I love the variety of my life," she says with a certain amount of incredulity. "It's hard to separate what's work and what's play." Variety is a nice word for incongruity. Baird is a genuine star in the world of "historically informed performance" of...

The Old Master By James Bartel With his first wife Maria Barbara, his soulmate as history tells us, Sebastian Bach fathered seven children. The first child was a daughter, Catharina. A pair of twins died within days. The final son died within a year. Months later, Maria Barbara succumbed to disease. Bach was then 35 and engaged in the full awakening of his genius. His workload was Herculean and mounting, and now there were five children at home without a mother, the oldest being 12. Staggered by grief, Bach shouldered on. Hear the Old Master speak: "I was obliged to...