SKOKIE, Ill. — As live music crawled back in the summer of 2021, launching a new opera company was on no one’s bingo card. No one’s except Emanuele Andrizzi and Franco Pomponi. The Italian conductor and Italian-American baritone … » Read

LONDON—As Lise Davidsen and Michael Spyres recently demonstrated at the Met, it is still possible these days to encounter a well-matched Tristan and Isolde in Wagner’s three-act endurance test. In even better news, Sara … » Read

The Metropolitan Museum commemorated July 4 with David Lang’s 2014 choral work The National Anthems . The five-movement, 24-minute piece was performed three times (for free) during the afternoon by the Clarion Choir and the Catalyst … » Read

In June, the Leipzig Bach Festival held a “Top 50 Bach Cantata Countdown”: 12 concerts—two per day, with four, and sometimes five cantatas each—counting down to No. 1. This curated craziness, June 11-21, was the brainchild … » Read

LONDON—Renowned as a showcase for a coloratura superstar, Vincenzo Bellini’s final opera hasn’t been seen at Covent Garden since the early 1990s. Richard Jones’s unconventional new staging for the Royal Ballet and Opera … » Read

LONDON—Michael Grandage’s 2010 staging of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd made a welcome return to Glyndebourne June 28 with a consistently fine cast and Allan Clayton making an anticipated role debut as the conflicted Captain … » Read

MUNICH—Wagner operas are not usually occasions for merriment. They are more often received in rapt concentration, as if sitting in church and staying silent until the end of sermon. That was not the case at the Bayerische Staatsoper on June … » Read

CHICAGO—The Grant Park Music Festival is used to rolling with the punches. On June 24, a severe downpour and flood warning forced the free outdoor series to cut a concert short just before its marquee offering: Peter Boyer’s Ellis … » Read

LONDON—Davóne Tines’s residency at the Barbican Centre has been an opportunity for the American bass-baritone to spread his curatorial wings and a chance for U.K. audiences to experience his charismatic voice and eclectic but … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO—The stars lined up in June at Davies Symphony Hall, as one San Francisco Symphony program after another formed a constellation of connections. It began on June 6, when Elim Chan, the orchestra’s music director designate, … » Read