Category: Stamps

New Stamps 2025

Every year, numerous new stamps are issued on the theme of music. The list of new issues published in the members-only-section of our website is updated several times per month.
 

18.5.25: Croatia / Czech Republic / Great Britain / India / Luxembourg / Mexico / Serbia / Slovenia / Spain
24.5.25: Austria / Botswana / Italy / Kazakhstan / Lebanon / Monaco / Uruguay
31.5.25: Bosnia (Serbian Republic) / Hungary / Vatican City
7.6.25: Austria / Canada / Croatia / Djibouti / Germany / Italy / Monaco / Taiwan
22.6.25: Belgium / Bulgaria / France / Greece / Jersey / Russia / Serbia

Stamps Europe (members only)  Stamps Overseas (members only)
 
Planned issues 2025 (members only)

New Stamps by Private Postal Services

Private Postal Services too release stamps related to music. Members will find a list with the latest issues in the members only section.
 


4.6.24: BW Post (Stuttgart) / Morgenpost (Mannheim)
5.7.24: Post Modern (Dresden)
8.12.24: Biberpost (Magdeburg) / BW Post (Stuttgart) / MZZ (Halle) / NordBrief (Schleswig) / Post Modern (Dresden)
3.2.25: Citipost (Hannover)
29.3.25: Citipost (Bielefeld) / RPV (Cottbus)
2.6.25: BW Post (Stuttgart) / LMF (Augsburg) / Nordkurier (Neubrandenburg) / Post Modern (Dresden) / RPV (Cottbus)
Private Postal Services 2024 (Members only)
Private Postal Services 2025 (Members only)

Stamp of the Month: June 2025

Georges Bizet


France 13.6.1960
The French composer Georges (Alexandre César Léopold) Bizet was born in Paris on October 25, 1838. He died of a heart attack on June 3, 1875, in Bougival, near Paris, at the age of just 36. June 2025 marks the 150th anniversary of his death.
 
Bizet’s father was an amateur singer and composer; his mother was the sister of the famous singing teacher François Delsarte. In 1848, before his 10th birthday, Georges Bizet became a student at the Paris Conservatoire and wrote his first symphony at the age of 17.
In 1857, he won a prize sponsored by Jacques Offenbach for the one-act operetta “Le docteur Miracle.” He also won the Rome Prize, securing a three-year scholarship in Rome. There, his talent flourished in works such as the opera buffa “Don Procopio” and his only liturgical work, the “Te Deum.” Back in Paris, he composed the operas “Les pêcheurs de perles” (1863), “La jolie fille de Perth” (1867), the symphony “Roma” (1868), and “Jeux d’enfants,” a piano four-hand work (1871). The popular “L’Arlésienne” (1872) was originally an occasional composition for a play by Alphonse Daudet, which Bizet adapted into a suite.
His one-act opéra comique “Djamileh” (1872) is often seen as a precursor to his most famous work, the opera “Carmen” (1875). Although “Carmen” was initially not well received by audiences, it is now one of the most popular works in all of operatic literature. Bizet, who had been made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor shortly before his death, did not live to see the success of his opera. He died three months after the premiere.

France 31.3.2025

 


The video shows the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Nathalie Stutzmann performing L’Arlésienne Suite No. 1 & Suite No. 2 by Georges Bizet at the Konserthuset, the Stockholm Concert Hall, in October 2014.

New Stamps 2024

Every year, numerous new stamps are issued on the theme of music. The list of new issues published in the members-only-section of our website is updated several times per month.
 

15.3.25: Azores / Italy / Serbia
5.4.25: Liberia / Serbia
15.4.25: Bosnia-Herzegovina / Guinea / Latvia / Lithuania / Thailand
28.4.25: Guinea-Bissau / Liberia / Sierra Leone
30.5.25: Central African Republic / Djibouti / Guinea / Guinea-Bissau / Sierra Leone

Stamps Europe (members only)  Stamps Overseas (members only)
 
Planned issues 2025 (members only)

Stamp of the Month: May 2025

Leroy Anderson

The American composer Leroy Anderson was born on June 29, 1908, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He died on May 18, 1975, in Woodbury, Connecticut. May 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of his death.
 
Leroy Anderson received his first musical lessons from his mother, an organist. He studied piano, counterpoint, canon, fugue, orchestration, and composition (with George Enescu, among others) at the New England Conservatory of Music and Harvard University.

Belgium 13.10.2007
Leroy Anderson became known primarily for his short, original concert pieces, which he composed for the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1936 onwards at the suggestion of Arthur Fiedler. The recordings of his works were huge commercial successes. His “Blue Tango” was the first instrumental recording to sell one million copies. The single reached number 1 in the US charts in 1951 and remained in the charts for 38 weeks. Anderson created primarily light classical music with a particular penchant for innovative orchestral effects and unconventional instruments. The best known example is “The Typewriter”, composed for typewriter and orchestra in 1950. It is likely that the designer had this piece in mind when he designed the Belgian postage stamp.
 

The video shows a scene from the film “Who’s Minding The Store” with Jerry Lewis
and music by Leroy Anderson.

Stamp of the Month: April 2025

Joséphine Baker

The American dancer, singer, and actress Josephine Baker (Freda Josephine McDonald) was born on June 3, 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri; she died on April 12, 1975, in Paris. April 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of her death.
 
Josephine Baker grew up in poverty. Her career began at the age of 16 at the Standard Theatre in Philadelphia. In New York, she was engaged in a vaudeville troupe, with which she toured the USA. From 1922 to 1924, she was a chorus girl in New York before being hired for “La Revue Nègre,” which premiered in Paris on October 2, 1925, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. With her dancing, she captured the Parisian audience by storm, who were seeing the Charleston for the first time. The “Revue Nègre” also performed in Brussels and Berlin. In 1926 and 1927, Josephine Baker was the star of the Folies Bergère and also played several leading roles

USA 16.7.2008

Frankreich 17.9.1994
in films until the 1930s. Because of her costumes and nude dances, she was banned from performing in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and Munich, which made her all the more interesting to audiences. While she suffered racism in the USA and failed with a Ziegfeld Follies show in 1936, she became the most successful American artist in France.
During World War II, Josephine Baker worked for the French Red Cross, the French Resistance, and the secret service, and in 1944 became a propaganda officer in the Free French Air Force. For her services, she received the Croix de Guerre in 1957 and was simultaneously inducted into the Legion of Honor. As early as the 1950s, Baker supported the US civil rights movement and, on August 28, 1963, was the only female speaker at the March on Washington organized by Martin Luther King Jr.
Although she had announced her retirement from the stage in 1956, she continued to appear in concerts and on television, and on April 8, 1975, a few days before her death, she celebrated her 50th stage anniversary with the premiere of her show “Joséphine” at the Bobino Theater in Paris.
 

The video shows a live TV appearance of the singer at the German Schlager Festival in 1966.

Stamp of the Month: March 2025

Maurice Ravel

The French composer Maurice Ravel was born on March 7, 1875 in Ciboure in the Pyrénées-Atlantique department. He died in Paris in 1937. March 2025 marks the 150th anniversary of his birth.
 
Ravel began studying at the Paris Conservatory in 1889, which lasted a total of 16 years. After his studies, he worked as a pianist, conductor and accompanist for his own works. Unfortunately, this career was ended by paralysis in 1933, and from then on Ravel devoted himself solely to composition.

Monaco 21.3.2025
Ravel’s early works were influenced primarily by Liszt, Chabrier, Fauré and Rimsky-Korsakov. However, his encounter with Claude Debussy, whose “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune” impressed him, was decisive for his own style. Ravel’s mother came from the Basque Country. The influence of Spanish folklore is therefore just as noticeable in Ravel’s compositions as the influence of jazz. Maurice Ravel also tried five times to win the so-called “Prix de Rome”, which is coveted among young French composers, but each time his compositions were rejected as being too avant-garde. Ravel’s best-known work is certainly his “Boléro”, which was actually written in 1928 as ballet music. He was inspired to write the ballet by Sergei Diaghilev, and the choreography was created by Bronislava Nijinska in 1929.
 

The video shows Ravel’s “Bolero” played by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel at the closing concert of the Lucerne Festival, which was broadcast live in more than 50 cinemas across Europe on September 18, 2010.
 
Read an article about Ravel’s opera “L’enfant et les sortilèges”
from the current issue of “Musikus” here.

Stamp of the Month: February 2025

Armen Tigranian

The Armenian composer and conductor Armen Tigranian was born on December 26, 1879 in Alexandropol (Russian Empire / today Gyumri, Armenia). He died on February 10, 1950 in Tbilisi. February 2025 marks the 75th anniversary of his death.
 
Tigranian was interested in music from a very early age. When he was 15, his family moved to Tbilisi. At the local music school, he learned to play the flute and piano and studied music theory and

Armenien 18.3.2005
composition. In 1902, Tigranian returned to Alexandropol, where he worked as a music teacher, founded a mixed amateur choir, and finally began composing. He incorporated Armenian music into his compositions and created numerous choral arrangements of folk songs. In 1908 and 1912, he composed his masterpiece “Anoush,” the first opera ever performed in Armenia, which premiered on August 4, 1912 by an amateur group in Alexandropol and quickly became a permanent fixture in the repertoire of many opera houses. Today, “Anoush” is generally considered the “national opera of the Armenian people.” After the establishment of the Soviet Union, however, Tigranian had to thoroughly rework the opera to adapt it to the principles of the new populist aesthetic. Tigranian’s other works include a dance suite for symphony orchestra, a cantata, incidental music, choral works, and songs. Tigranian’s second opera, “David Bek”, which he composed between 1941 and 1950, was premiered shortly after his death. For the musical theater, Tigranian translated the libretti of Verdi’s Rigoletto and Bizet’s Carmen into Armenian.
 

The video shows the brass band of the city of Gyumri (formerly Alexandropol) under the direction of Artak Grigoryan playing the overture to Tigranian’s opera “Anoush”.

Stamp of the Month: January 2025

Richard Tucker

The American tenor Richard Tucker (actually Ruvn Ticker) was born on August 28, 1913 in Brooklyn. He died on January 8, 1975 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. January 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of his death.
 
Tucker’s musical talent was discovered early and he sang in the synagogue choir as a child. He became cantor at the Brooklyn Jewish Center before beginning to study singing in 1940 to become an opera singer.

USA 10.9.1997
After several unsuccessful auditions at the Metropolitan Opera, he got a contract and made his debut on January 25, 1945 as Enzo in “La Gioconda” at the MET, whose ensemble he was a member of until his death and sang 30 roles in 715 performances. In 1949, Arturo Toscanini chose the still little-known tenor for the role of Radames in his famous recording of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida”. His few guest tours took him to the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera and La Scala in Milan, among others.
Richard Tucker is considered the last great MET tenor. He is the only one whose funeral has ever taken place on the MET stage.
 

The video shows Richard Tucker with the aria “Guardate pazzo son” from Puccini’s opera “Manon Lescaut” in a live television recording on September 1, 1966.