Cornelia says you <em>must</em> watch <em>Melancholia</em> Cornelia says you <em>must</em> watch <em>Melancholia</em>

Impossible to pick any one film clip, but it’s hard to imagine a more evocative use of operatic music than Lars von Trier‘s Melancholia.

Sex power god Sex power god

Breaking the Waves and Tannhaüser at Houston Grand Opera are a can’t-miss doubleheader of sex and miracles.

<em>Macabre</em> fascination <em>Macabre</em> fascination

Can György Ligeti‘s only opera be understood as the composer’s own grappling with trauma, death, and memory of a past life?

What’s my motivation? What’s my motivation?

Wagner must intrude at some point because he invented film music.

New waves New waves

Missy Mazzoli, a 36-year-old composer from Brooklyn, has created the most startling and moving new American opera in memory.

Blind devotion

Danish composer Poul Ruders, having been deeply moved by Lars von Trier’s 2000 film Dancer in the Dark, used his third commission from the Royal Danish Theatre to create a 75-minute opera based on this tragic story of a mother’s sacrifice to save her son from hereditary blindness.  The result is a small masterpiece, renamed…