LONDON —None of the three previous collaborations between composer George Benjamin and librettist Martin Crimp brimmed with humor, so it was a pleasant surprise to find sunny spells breaking out during the prevailing despair of their latest … » Read

CHICAGO—During his 13 years as Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director, Riccardo Muti and the orchestra have visited Carnegie Hall often, in 2011, 2012 (when they opened the season), 2015, 2018 and 2019. Tomorrow night will be their … » Read

CHICAGO—After more than a decade attending Haymarket Opera Company’s seasons of Baroque opera, I’ve finally figured out why the ensemble’s productions are so delightful. The idea struck me after Friday night’s … » Read

BALTIMORE—The upbeat vibes surrounding the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s new music director, Jonathon Heyward, were reinforced in an engaging America-centric program that launched the season’s first subscription concerts. … » Read

LOS ANGELES—Mozart’s Don Giovanni owes a lot of its durability to its ambiguity. Everyone has a different take on it. Just the description of it as a dramma giocoso invites a vast interpretive range. Take, for instance, the startling … » Read

Early in the opera Dead Man Walking , based on Sister Helen Prejean’s memoir of counseling death-row inmates, the protagonist’s car gets stopped for speeding. Sister Helen is racing to cover the 150 miles between her New Orleans … » Read

LONDON—Whether it was an appearance by rising-star Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, or just the relative ease of getting to and from London’s Royal Festival Hall for a three o’clock Sunday afternoon event, this September 24 … » Read

PHILADELPHIA—In the 1880s, reporter Nellie Bly feigned madness in order to infiltrate the Women’s Lunatic Asylum in New York City. She chronicled its brutal conditions in a series of first-person articles in the New York World , and … » Read

For those who have long bewailed the Metropolitan Opera’s neglect of new work, the current season, which opened last night with Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking , is a dream come true. It includes six works that premiered between 1986 … » Read

Doppelganger can be seen as director Claus Guth’s attempt to create an opera that Franz Schubert never wrote. In the program booklet for his creation, Guth laments that the composer’s actual operas, with their inadequate librettos, … » Read