While Scott Joplin was the king of ragtime, he had his heart set on writing opera. His only surviving score, Treemonisha, ends with a slow march that's "happy as a bird in June."

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New albums of music by the "Three Bs" prove that going back to the basics has its advantages. Hear a sweet-toned violin concerto, an audacious piano sonata and a solo cello suite caressed by a lute.

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If you fell in love with oranges, would you scour the world to find them? Prokofiev's absurdist, citrus-scented opera features zany plot lines, curious characters and one little march that made it big.

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How does an Argentine Jewish artist approach the ultimate Christian narrative? MacArthur "genius" Osvaldo Golijov says it's by creating a "Latin American Jesus." His Passion According to St. Mark was recently staged at Carnegie Hall with a diverse group of singers from New York schools.

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You read that right. Forget Friday the 13th and beware the Ides of March instead. (It was great advice, even if Julius Caesar didn't take it.) Comfort yourself in the glory that was Rome, courtesy of Respighi's blazing "Pines of the Appian Way" — performed on another momentous occasion.

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Fridays are funnier with a classical cartoon at noon, from Deceptive Cadence.

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Ukranian pianist Valentina Lisitsa decided to rev up her stalled-out career in a very 21st-century way: by putting up dozens of videos of herself playing core repertoire. Now she's a superstar by any traditional standard. Do her major-label recordings matter?

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Ukrainian pianist Valentina Lisitsa decided to rev up her stalled-out career in a very 21st-century way: by putting up dozens of videos of herself playing core repertoire. Now she's a superstar by any traditional standard. Do her major-label recordings matter?

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The composer of Faust also wrote music fit for a pope. Wednesday, before the introduction of Pope Francis, a marching band played opera composer Charles Gounod's Pontifical March. Hear the stately, serene Vatican anthem.

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Pretty much the first thing that New York's Cardinal Egan shared about the new pointiff, the former Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires? That he loves opera.

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