In the annals of the great Romantics, few embody the tensions among fame, fortune, and the pleasures of worldly love—and the contrasting desire to sublimate oneself in a straightjacket of religiosity—like Franz Liszt. The flamboyant … » Read

LONDON—There was a stirring in the bowels of Covent Garden this week as Irish composer’s Gerald Barry’s first opera received its first London airing since its inception almost three decades ago. It proved to be a trying … » Read

On September 26, high society and celebrity guests entered Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater on a red carpet for New York City Ballet’s Fall Fashion Gala, an annual event pairing choreographers with couture designers to create … » Read

LEEDS—The Royal Opera aside, and passing respectfully over good work done by smaller outfits like English Touring Opera, most of the publicly supported British opera companies seem locked in a constant struggle with their finances and their … » Read

Challenging the form seems the underlying theme to Opera Philadelphia’s consistently refreshing O19 Festival, and if the U.S. premiere of Philip Venables’s Denis & Katya does that most obviously, the two more conventional … » Read

When the English National Opera performed Porgy and Bess a year ago in a new co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, it was widely predicted that the Met audience would love it. That prediction proved to be spot-on on Monday evening (September … » Read

It’s not fair to say that the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra were peeking at each other’s season-opening plans, but for sure there were strange and wonderful program similarities. Both orchestras have moved … » Read

BERLIN — Booing can be a badge of honor in Germany’s theaters, particularly when it comes to canonical works. That’s at least one way of regarding the vehement reactions that have greeted Frank Castorf’s new staging of La … » Read

If you caught Philip Venables’s opera of Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis at last season’s NYC Prototype Festival, you’ll know he doesn’t fight shy of harrowing subject matter. Yet although Denis & Katya , which … » Read

The idea of a choral setting of the U.S. Constitution sounds like a pretty dry couple of hours. But not only is Benjamin Yarmolinsky’s self-styled “secular oratorio” a cornucopia of catchy themes and variations, in the committed … » Read