Lorin Maazel

In the dressing room off the master bedroom, mezzo-soprano superstar  Denyce Graves  is choosing between a glittery black gown and a shimmery silver tunic. In the music room nearby, soprano  Joyce El-Khoury  has donned a full-blown scarlet va-va-voom gown and is topping the outfit off with dangly earrings. Down on the front lawn, a pair of two-week-old lambs is, yes, gamboling around a 280-year-old beech tree. The ...

A row of barn-like sheds stands on Lorin Maazel’s farm in the rolling hills of Rappahannock County. They’re simple prefabricated sheds, the kind you can pick up at any home-supply store, decorated like miniature barns: the kind of sheds people set up in their yards to store the power mower, the mulch, the lawn tools. On Maazel’s farm, they contain high-quality Yamaha keyboards. They’re practice rooms for the you...