LONDON—A nagging concern ahead of Glyndebourne’s new Parsifal arose because a decade ago the company’s current artistic director, Stephen Langridge, staged a production for The Royal Opera that badly misread the opera. He … » Read

It was a hastily arranged marriage. The National Symphony Orchestra was looking for a new music director, and after André Previn turned down the job offer, I was approached. My relationship with the ensemble was minimal at that point in … » Read

In 2025-26, noted presenter Washington Performing Arts (WPA) will avoid Kennedy Center, one of its longtime venues for classical music and other performances. WPA instead will spread its 60 th - anniversary offerings across a range of area halls, … » Read

The Hong Kong Philharmonic will welcome the Finnish composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen as composer-in-residence for 2025-26. He will join his countryman Tarmo Peltokoski, music director designate for next season and officially in the job as … » Read

For the nine months from September 2025 to May 2026, the Balourdet Quartet will serve as the first-ever string quartet in residence for the Seattle Chamber Music Society (SCMS). The four members—violinists Angela Bae and Justin DeFilippis, … » Read

On May 18, British Prime Minister Kier Starmer, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and Antonio Costa, president of the European Council, held a long-anticipated meeting in London to reset U.K.-E.U. relations in the … » Read

For flashes of Zen insight, George Balanchine’s collected sayings rival or surpass Yogi Berra’s. Did the founding choreographer of the New York City Ballet truly once propose that all ballets should be called Swan Lake because then … » Read

Once upon a time, Republicans embraced private giving as a way to replace government assistance. In 1988, George H. W. Bush put forth the idea of “a thousand points of light” in his acceptance speech as the Republican nominee for … » Read

When the National Endowment of the Arts withdrew a $25,000 grant awarded to support the Virginia Opera’s world premiere of Loving v. Virginia , by composer Damien Geter and librettist Jessica Murphy Moo, a chorus member in the production, … » Read

The Metropolitan Opera increasingly relies on co-productions as a means to cut costs and, in most cases, give new stagings an “out of town tryout” before coming to the Met. The current season’s John Adams’s Antony and … » Read