Elijah Moshinsky’s grand staging from 1995 of The Queen of Spades , which was conducted by Valery Gergiev in his first Russian assignment at the Metropolitan Opera, exemplified the company’s commitment to Russian opera following the … » Read

As Music Director of both the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin may be a regular visitor—“an adopted New Yorker,” as he himself put it in brief remarks from the … » Read

CHICAGO—Back in town after their virtually annual visit to Carnegie Hall, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra gave its Nov. 21 subscription audience a program of Shakespeare-inspired vocal music, with Spanish conductor Juanjo Mena on the podium … » Read

Teodor Currentzis and his musicAeterna chorus and orchestra made their belated North American debut last week with the Verdi Requiem. For more than a decade, the Greek-Russian conductor has won considerable acclaim in his homeland and throughout … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO—Across the street from San Francisco Symphony’s concert presentation of the first act of Die Walküre , a different opera about a pair of siblings on the run from danger appeared on the San Francisco Opera stage. … » Read

For all the fame and fortune of one and the relative obscurity of the other, Kurt Weill and Marc Blitzstein make natural bedfellows. By the time that Weill, the doyen of left-wing Weimar-era music theater, had morphed into the Broadway composer … » Read

LONDON—The Barbican Center got two dudes for the price of one during a three-night residency by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Gustavo Dudamel kicked off on Nov. 18 with the London premiere of John Adams’s piano concerto Must the Devil … » Read

It is not unheard of for the singer of King Marke to win highest honors in a performance of Tristan und Isolde  It happened in 1981 when Matti Salminen made his Metropolitan Opera debut in James Levine’s first performance of the opera … » Read

LONDON—It’s fourth time lucky in English National Opera’s Orpheus season. In the operas of Gluck , Offenbach , and Birtwistle a trio of unsatisfactory stagings diverted attention from some fine all-round musicianship, so it has … » Read

Chicago has a long and intimate relationship with Prokofiev. He made his  Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut as conductor composer, and soloist early as 1918, and Chicago was the first American city to hear music from his new ballet Romeo and … » Read