On the right weekends, the Tanglewood Festival is perhaps the ultimate summer destination for serious classical music fans. The weekend of July 26-28 the acclaimed Festival of Contemporary Music was in full swing, featuring what was apparently a … » Read

SEATTLE — In this corner of the Pacific Northwest, summer means chamber music—lots of it. Other cities offer continuing orchestral adventures with the hometown band at vacation venues like the Hollywood Bowl, Ravinia, or Tanglewood … » Read

Grand opera simply doesn’t get any grander than Le prophète . The five-act Giacomo Meyerbeer/Eugène Scribe work offers an epic treatment of the 16th-century conflict between the Catholic Church and the radical Protestant … » Read

CHICAGO—Maybe it was the aftereffect of spending Friday afternoon in front of TV watching the Olympic Games opening ceremonies with all those spectacular overhead shots of Paris. Maybe it was seeing those boatloads of athletes representing … » Read

BAYREUTH—The annual Wagner festival could have used a hit this summer. In its first two post-lockdown seasons, in 2022, the festival struck out with a Ring cycle that reduced Wagner’s epic to a Netflix-style dysfunctional family drama … » Read

CHICAGO—Ah, the Grant Park Music Festival. These days, its name is something of a misnomer: Its orchestra and chorus have performed at Millennium Park, north of Grant Park, since that downtown attraction opened to the public 20 years ago … » Read

The considerable riches of the so-called bel canto (early 19th-century) era of Italian opera have been searched out for decades, yet it is still possible to discover high-quality work that has never had a modern revival. Teatro Nuovo demonstrated … » Read

Mostly Mozart is gone, but its orchestra lives on. It has returned as the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, which made its official debut on July 23—the start of three-week residency (12 concerts) at David Geffen Hall. The … » Read

LONDON—Every year, the program for the BBC Proms seems to trigger an acrimonious debate. Are the powers that be dumbing down? Where’s the risk taking? And in the case of this year’s ‘’Disco Prom,’’ what … » Read

Pelléas et Mélisande and Salome are big-house works, most often tackled by companies with larger stages and budgets than Des Moines Metro Opera. But the company more than justified the presence of both pieces on its 2024 … » Read