The character singer Charles Anthony, who set the record for most appearances at the Metropolitan Opera – 2,928 – during a career that spanned from 1954 to 2010, died on 15 February at the age of 82.

It is a sorry state of affairs when an opera company resorts to locking out its own performers – and the once vibrant and innovative New York City Opera (NYCO) is looking like barely a rump of its former self.

A restrospective of the late British fashion designer, Alexander McQueen, has become the most popular fashion exhibition ever to be held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Oft dubbed the Oscars of the fashion industry, the annual Met Ball was this year a particularly flamboyant affair. The gala dinner traditionally held to launch a major show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute this year celebrated Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, a retrospective of the late British designer's work.

In Britain it ended in freezing temperatures and weeks of snow and ice. Globally, though, 2010 was still the second warmest year on record, according to Met Office scientists who yesterday reaffirmed that the world is continuing to get warmer.

Tobias Picker, 56, is an award-winning American composer whose work has been performed by the world's leading orchestras and opera houses. In addition to his symphonic and chamber music, song cycles and concertos , he has written four operas, including 'An American Tragedy' and children's opera 'Fantastic Mr Fox'. He lives in New York

Engelbert Humperdinck’s ‘Hansel und Gretel’ has had to wait 120 years for its first Proms staging, but its rapturous reception brings the wheel of its popularity full circle.

Consternation and ridicule have greeted the news (on The Spectator's blog) that Gordon Brown is looking for a new career as an after-dinner speaker, and hopes for $100,000 for a night's work. (For $20,000 more, Sarah Brown will come too, either to hand out prizes or stand around looking supportive, like Linda McCartney in the line-up of Wings, but without the tambourine.)

They are not quite gone with the wind, but the dresses that the actress Vivien Leigh wore as Scarlett O'Hara in the Old South movie classic are well on their way to falling apart. Curators at a museum in Texas are appealing for $30,000 (£19,000) to restore them.