In the beginning In the beginning

In Jacopo Peri’s seminal Euridice, the Newberry Consort and Haymarket Opera made a compelling case for putting you in the room where it happened.

Walking through the valley of death Walking through the valley of death

Peter Sellars‘s triple bill of Viennese modernism featuring Erwartung and a concert performance of The Raft of the Medusa stare down death at the Salzburg Festival

Breaking the box Breaking the box

Jacquelyn Stucker talks to Kevin Ng about repertoire, tearing down the Fach system, and what it takes to make music from baroque to George Benjamin her own.

To the extreme To the extreme

No other singer of Die Amme approaches the towering standard set by the German mezzo Tanja Ariane Baumgartner.

A boy’s best friend A boy’s best friend

At the opening of the Scottish Opera’s 2017 production of Turnage’s opera Greek, I was very sorry I’d missed Anna Nicole.

Say it with music Say it with music

Capriccio was a great pleasure on Friday night, March 4. This was a co-production of Opera Philadelphia and The Curtis Institute, presented in the intimate Pearlman Theater at the Kimmel Center.

Rex appeal Rex appeal

Say this about Oedipus: The character’s got staying power.

We were dead, you know

The setting: a dark plaza extending directly in front of a storied opera house. The time: just after a ho-hum revival of something Puccini. The crowd streams out, moderately satisfied but also far from bowled over. A group open to a proposition, you could say.  

Truth is stranger

The wealthy suburban community of Greenwich, CT is a place where diamonds are in no short supply.  Yet there are still some diamonds of artistic excellence hidden in this seaside town, including the shockingly well-done production of Hans Werner Henze’s The Runaway Slave (El Cimarrón) by the Greenwich Music Festival.  This most likely will be…

Gettin’ Ligeti Wit It

When invited to participate in a discourse on artistic standards (hello, internet!), it’s easy — pleasurable, even — for an aesthete to bray about “the fall.” Where are the true heldentenors? Your kingdom for a Callas! (Or a Stratas, or a Rysanek!) And might the public, at long last, deserve a stable of directors who…