PARIS—What does Russian director Dmitri Tcherniakov have against the French? First Bizet, now Berlioz… Gallic composers inspire him to put their leading characters into analysis. A year on from his hotel-lobby Carmen in … » Read

A program of non-blockbuster 19th-century piano quartets by Suk, Brahms, and Dvorák doesn’t sound like anything to write home about, really. Maybe not much to keep listeners awake, either. But the audience at Sunday’s concert … » Read

Julia Wolfe is no stranger to the history of industrial relations and its tragedies. Her Steel Hammer (2009) for three sopranos and chamber orchestra examined the often fractious relationship between man and machine through the tale of African … » Read

NEW YORK - The Metropolitan Opera hasn’t presented Debussy’s sole completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande (1895), since Sir Simon Rattle conducted it in 2010. The company’s new music director, Yannick … » Read

LONDON—The Royal Opera was at pains to release advance information about its production of The Queen of Spades so no one could say they hadn’t been warned. This was to be a reinterpretation rather than a recreation, with director … » Read

Now in its seventh year, Manhattan’s Prototype Festival, a co-production with Beth Morrison Projects and HERE, is a fascinating mix of mostly new, edgily contemporary, multi-disciplinary opera and music theater. As a prime example of its … » Read

An established artist and co-founder of ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), the Chinese-born American composer Huang Ruo is a perfect match for National Sawdust’s FERUS festival, defined as “a showcase of untamed voices.” … » Read

Sarah Kane was one of the brightest of comets, a blazing talent who set the British theatrical firmament ablaze with five extraordinary and visceral plays written between 1995 and 1999. Though her debut, the scabrous and uncompromising Blasted , … » Read

As many may surmise, the title of Conrad L. Osborne’s massive tome-- Opera as Opera: The State of the Art --was prompted by Joseph Kerman’s Opera as Drama , a work first published in 1956 that, among other things, influenced certain … » Read

The Metropolitan Opera introduced its fourth and last new production of the current season on New Year’s Eve with Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur , an opera many will associate with critical scorn of long standing. Indeed, half a … » Read