MILAN--Few events in classical music can match the opening night of La Scala for momentousness and public spectacle. In the weeks before, the production, guest list, and gala dinner menu are subject to intense scrutiny and endless media coverage. … » Read

I did not want to love Opera San José’s new, designed-for-digital production of Jake Heggie’s 2008 chamber opera, Three Decembers . The project starring Susan Graham went online Dec. 3, and will stream on demand through Dec. … » Read

On July 1 the Teatro Real in Madrid made news when it broke a coronavirus-imposed silence lasting three months with Verdi’s  La Traviata , the first of several performances of the opera that ran through the month. In the apparent … » Read

Most of the operas Donizetti wrote prior to his breakthrough success with  Anna Bolena  in 1830 are all but forgotten, despite his having already written around 30 of them by then. In recent years the Donizetti Opera Festival has been … » Read

Time was when the cancellation of two superstar tenors would send a producer of opera into a panic. But that was before the coronavirus, which at least has served to put catastrophic events in perspective as it renders live performances almost an … » Read

SEATTLE, WA — Like an artfully spliced film sequence, the highlight of Seattle Symphony’s concert on November 19 seemed to bridge the painful months separating us from the pre-COVID-19 era. Tyshawn Sorey’s For Roscoe Mitchell … » Read

The Royal Opera House’s latest livestream was a double homecoming. In 1734, Handel relocated his opera company from Lincoln’s Inn Fields to the old Theatre Royal, the building constructed in 1732 on the site of the present opera … » Read

Long Beach Opera is renowned for being at the forefront of innovation, its most recent triumph having been the world premiere of Anthony Davis’s The Central Park Five , which won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for music. The Southern California … » Read

There’s something eerily fitting about Esa-Pekka Salonen’s arrival this fall as music director of the San Francisco Symphony. At a time when the coronavirus pandemic has turned the classical music world inside out and upside down, the … » Read

The life of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges reads like an opera plot—and a good one too. The first acknowledged Black classical composer in history, Saint-Georges was born on the island of Guadeloupe in 1745, son of a French … » Read