How do you compare multiple Einsteins? Well, it's all relative

Given that Ann Widdecombe spent her prime promoting Victorian attitudes to abortion and homosexuality, you could argue she has some atoning to do, and her self-reinvention certainly makes a start.

Three years ago the Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho was virtually unknown in Britain.

Despite a turbulent year for markets, our 2011 portfolio made only a small loss. James Moore has our new picks

Outlook Sadly for insurer Admiral, Confused is the word that these days sums up customers' attitudes towards the price comparison market – and not Confused.com. With four major players in the market and a myriad of niche competitors snapping at their heels, maybe now is the time for someone to launch a price comparison site comparison site. In the meantime, the winner in this business is the company that shouts loudest (or spends the most on memorable advertising).

Connie Fisher's plight highlights occupational hazard for singers

Among often-heard platitudes that denigrate musical "crossover" is an argument that the Three Tenors did not convince their fans to listen to opera. But now there's living, singing proof that they did. James Valenti, the fast-rising star tenor, says that he might not be where he is now – taking on leading roles at the Royal Opera House – had it not been for their inspiration.

Strip away the colour from Debussy’s great music-drama, and the plot you are left with has a bourgeois banality: a marital deception, culminating in the cuckold slaying his rival, and his wife dying of shock in childbirth.

Paavo Järvi's spacious, serene reading of A German Requiem is beautifully recorded.

When Anna Netrebko decided to dedicate a programme to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, the choice of Antonio Pappano as conductor was a crucial masterstroke.

Ten years is a lifetime in singing and since his London recital debut, courtesy of Ian Rosenblatt, Juan Diego Florez has achieved superstar status in that highly specialised corner of the bel canto repertoire demanding suppleness and speed of delivery. Things don’t always go his way – even Florez is fallible -and this his fourth Rosenblatt recital was, as the football pundits love to say, very much a game of two halves.

Ever since, as a small girl, she sang along with her opera-singer mother's warm-ups – shadowing her coloratura note-for-note in Queen of the Night – Aleksandra Kurzak has been up for challenges. She spent her childhood preparing to become a professional violinist – regarding singing as being too easy – but when Placido Domingo singled out this feisty young Pole in his Operalia festival, she decided to give singing a go instead.