Lulu at Covent Garden

One of the leading lights of Berg’s Vienna was the architect Adolf Loos, the great crusader against ornament.

Un ballo in maschera at the Teatro Real

The greatest dramatic tenor and soprano roles have proven irresistible to Marcelo Alvarez, who started primarily as a lyric tenor, and Violeta Urmana, whose first career success came as a mezzo.

Sigismondo, La Cenerentola, Demetrio e Polibio at Pesaro

The fourteen year old Rossini composed his first opera Demetrio e Polibio in 1806 though it was not performed for another six years.

Tristan und Isolde, Bayreuth 2009

As the prelude plays, we see circles of fluorescent light moving slowly in uncertain black space. Are we seeing flights of flying saucers, as in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

Mozart and Rossini Finales at Grant Park, Chicago

During a recent concert at the Grant Park Music Festival, held on this
occasion in the adjacent Harris Theater, members of the Ryan Opera Center of
Lyric Opera of Chicago presented ensembles from four operas, two each by Mozart
and by Rossini.

Schumann’s Genoveva

Robert Schumann’s only opera Genoveva (1850) is best known as a failure in its time and has since fallen into the list of succËs d’estime, but with this new release, based on a production intended for television, conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt champions the work in his second recording of the score.

Tales of Hoffmann at Santa Fe

The performances of Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann
at Santa Fe Opera this summer are based on Michael Kaye’s edition of
the score.

Tristan in Seattle

Seattle, the city of software and Starbucks, is also a summer site for serious Wagnerites.

To Loxford with Love

There was a time when the works of Benjamin Britten, one of the
20th-Century’s supreme composers, were not welcome at Santa Fe Opera.

Marco Polo at Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam

Does this Tan Dun opera prove or disprove that for East and West, the twain shall never meet?