The Glimmerglass Festival has for some years followed a formula: three mainstage “adult” operas, one  Broadway musical, also on the main stage, and one children’s opera in a reduced setting. That was the pattern this year, … » Read

Two concerts, one each on July 10 and 11, enabled a listener to compare the sound of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the Hunter Pavilion; the former was deemed a "pre-opening night" for workers who had participated in the three-year project, … » Read

Teatro Nuovo followed its July 15 Don Giovanni performance with Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia the following night, again at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater. The company’s fine period-instrument orchestra was here led by … » Read

While the U.S. celebrated its semiquincentennial this month, Will Crutchfield’s Teatro Nuovo looked back not to 1776, but to a more recent milestone: the 1825–1826 season, when the traveling company led by tenor Manuel García … » Read

The ongoing crisis at the Boston Symphony Orchestra seems to have done little to dilute the quality of the ensemble’s music making. Since the March announcement that the BSO board had decided not to renew Andris Nelsons’s contract as … » Read

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