Author: Gary Hoffman

For the first production of its 55th season Lyric Opera of Chicago has staged a revival of Puccini’s Tosca with a cast of notable singers led by music director Sir Andrew Davis.

Vincent d’Indy lived eighty years and, when not composing, spent his time revising the teaching of music in France or simply annoying everybody.

Noblesse oblige: The Met feels it must present Aida — and
Tosca — and La BohËme — and certain other gaudy spectacles — because it’s the Met and everyone expects the grandest of the grand.

A writer goes to dine in an urban Chinese restaurant, where his eye is caught by a distressed young woman among the crowd of diners.

Bartlett Sher’s production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia has
proved one of the more admired stagings of the Peter Gelb regime, but
I’ve avoided it due to a surfeit of Barbieres and to fond
memories of the John Cox production on Robin Wagner’s delicious turntable
set, about as ideal a Barbiere as could be imagined.