Human rights watchdogs are losing their heads over a controversial auction in Paris on Wednesday. At issue is the sale of a 150-year-old guillotine — with a starting price of close to $10,000 — which ...

The contradictions and ironies of the Terror, when the guillotine bloodily ruled France, are well described by Fife in his part-narrative, part-character study of that dreadful era (the second recent ...

Poulenc’s 1957 opera, one of only a handful since Puccini’s 1926 Turandot to gain a firm place in the international repertoire, is based (via an intermediary play and novel) on a historical incident ...