The press preview for the Bowes Center for Performing Arts on Nov. 13 announced the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s (SFCOM) major expansion in the heart of the city’s Civic Center. “It’s a planting of the flag, and … » Read

When Sarah Ruhl [pictured]wrote her play Eurydice in 2003, she could not have foreseen that nearly 20 years later it would appear as an opera on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. But on Nov. 23, her reimagining of the Orpheus myth, with music … » Read

Michigan Opera Theater is on a roll. A bank roll, apparently, for it has just been given a $5 million grant from the William Davidson Foundation. The company’s largest single gift will go toward updating the century-old Detroit Opera House … » Read

During the pandemic, Adele Schonhardt and Chris Howlett created the Melbourne Digital Concert Hall (MDCH), which streamed 430 live performances and raised well over $1.6 million for musicians whose normal performance venues had shut down. What … » Read

A new production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, always big news, is even more noteworthy as the classical music world slowly emerges from the pandemic. On Nov. 19 the English National Opera (ENO) introduces director Richard Jones’s staging … » Read

The Spoleto Festival, never one to shy away from the new and unusual in its opera programming, has announced the three that will highlight its upcoming season, May 27-June, the first under new General Director Mena Mark Hanna . He succeeded Nigel … » Read

The city of San Francisco is providing an acid test for the willingness of audiences to return to post-pandemic live performances. Tech companies, which now account for 19 percent of the city’s private work force, led the way in instituting … » Read

On Nov. 16 two 13-year-old girls—Zohra and Farida, a trumpet player and a violinist—arrived in Qatar’s capital city of Doha, where they were met by Ahmad Naser Sarmast, the founder and head of the Afghanistan National Institute … » Read

Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero, an alumna of her country’s El Sistema, has challenged last weekend’s  widely reported gathering of 8,100 young musicians to set a Guinness world record. The government, she posits, ordered … » Read

Song recitals are traditionally rather staid affairs, with stiffly attired singers tucked into the curved embrace of a concert grand piano performing music that only connoisseurs can enjoy. But this need not be the case, suggests Thomas Guthrie, … » Read