Contemporary music can be a prickly affair, but for those driven by the pleasure principle it’s nice to know there are some seriously thoughtful composers out there offering new music to listeners looking for a good time. That’s … » Read

The Vienna State Opera plans to open to live, if limited audiences on May 19. In the meantime, its COVID-era policy of presenting premieres to an empty auditorium continues with this April 29 streaming of Frank Castorf’s intriguing, … » Read

In an act of collegiality rare in any profession, Kim Noltemy and Fabio Luisi, the respective president and CEO and music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO), i nvited 50 members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra , out of work for … » Read

Yuval Sharon’s concise deconstruction of Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung is perhaps the ultimate realization of Wagner’s command: “Children, make something new,” although it probably isn’t exactly … » Read

LONDON--It is 72 years since George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel , his vision of a dystopian future where mass surveillance kept civilians under the strict control of an all-powerful state. When composer Mihkel Kerem read it, he … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO – Hobbled by the worldwide COVID-19 shutdown, Esa-Pekka Salonen is easing his way through his first season as music director of the San Francsico Symphony through digital-only programs. The first was the introductory … » Read

London’s Royal Opera House will finally reopen with socially distanced audiences on May 17. In the meantime, it continues its rewarding series of live streamed events with this April 9 double bill of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s … » Read

Pandemic programming has encouraged opera companies to reinvent themselves as TV or movie producers, but few have been as ingenious or as apposite as Seattle Opera with its new film of Jonathan Dove’s Flight . Written in 1998 by British … » Read

An insightful survey of works by Florence Price is one of four new albums exploring nearly a century of solo piano music by American composers. Born in 1887 in Little Rock, Price trained at the New England Conservatory before migrating to Chicago … » Read

Perhaps surprisingly, La Scala announced two weeks ago that it expects to close 2021 in the black. The secret to keeping the books in order without live performances for the last year (ticket sales account for a third of the house’s income) … » Read