The San Francisco Bay Area’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra joined Southern California’s Long Beach Opera to perform Handel’s Tolomeo at New York’s Caramoor estate near Katonah in the Hudson Valley. Georg…
PROMS 2026: The CBSO and Kazuki Yamada Pay Tribute to John Adams at the BBC Proms
Bruckner, Sibelius, John Adams: you only need to hear a snatch or two of their writing to recognise the composer in question. In the case of Adams, the label of…
Celebrating the Bicentennial of Italian Opera in America with Teatro Nuovo: Il Don Giovanni and Il Turco in Italia
Every summer Teatro Nuovo presents operas from the 18th and early 19th century in New York City. Its productions are “music-driven”: repertoire is often original, performance practice well-researched, diction intelligible,…
PROMS 2026: The Great Known Unknown: Ryan Bancroft Views the Afterlife with BBC Welsh Forces
When that final cut-off point arrives, when the Great Reaper pays us all the inevitable visit, are we really any the wiser as to the next step, what follows, what…
Butterfly and Così at Glimmerglass
That’s Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Kelley Rourke and Eric Einhorn’s Cosi, not to be confused with Cosi fan tutte (though Cosi was set to Mozart’s slaughtered Cosi fan tutte score).…
Richard Strauss, Ariadne auf Naxos at Glyndebourne
Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos should in many ways be the ideal Glyndebourne opera. It is indeed pretty much the ideal opera for any opera house, given its metatheatrical treatment not…
Des Moines: King Roger Reigns Supreme
Des Moines Metro Opera’s unsurpassingly ravishing production of Karol Szymanowski’s King Roger has joined the ranks of the finest performances I have ever experienced. This seldom performed masterpiece does not…
An Entertaining, Pocket-Sized Magic Flute at West Green
“All women need a man beside them” declares the Speaker as he instructs Tamino in the Temple of Wisdom, his misogyny prompting a few knowing smiles in Richard Studer’s new…
Vintage Puccini Cheered in Des Moines
Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca is a Top Ten favorite that hasn’t been seen at Des Moines Metro Opera since 2009, so the company thought it was high time to give its…
PROMS 2026: Noseda returns to the BBC Philharmonic at the Proms
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: Beethoven’s Ninth at the Proms. A regular annual fixture, for a long time it occupied the final Friday before the Last Night,…