CARDIFF—Leonard Bernstein’s Candide is all about optimism, and a director needs an awful lot of it to attempt a successful production. The piece has had more revisions than Bernstein had hot dinners and given that some versions fill … » Read

CHICAGO—In April 1991 Georg Solti wrapped up his 22-year tenure as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with two blockbuster programs: a concert version of Verdi’s complete Otello with a cast headed by Luciano Pavarotti … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO—Ferruccio Busoni, Italian born but spiritually German, is one of the odder ducks in the great aviary of classical music. In his lifetime he was known primarily as a pianist, maybe the greatest since Liszt, but he provoked … » Read

LONDON—On November 3, 1973, a 20-year-old Oxbridge organ scholar by the name of Peter Phillips conducted a group of lay clerks (professional church singers) and choral scholars in a concert of Renaissance music in St. Mary Magdalen's … » Read

LONDON—With its chamber forces and whispered intimacies, Ariadne auf Naxos is tailor-made for country-house opera. The conceit, that a wealthy patron is putting on a work its composer fears will go over the heads of an audience here for the … » Read

LONDON—Sir Simon Rattle’s six years at the helm of the London Symphony Orchestra has seen a return to world-beating form following the lumpy and now politically awkward Gergiev era. This June 14 concert at London’s Barbican … » Read

OJAI, CA—The main event of the 2023 Ojai Music Festival was the premiere of Omar’s Journey , the scaled down version of Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels’s Pultizer Prize- winning opera about the enslaved West African Muslim … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO-- El último sueño de Frida y Diego  (or The Last Dream of Frida and Diego) has a complicated back story and a complicated genesis and a complicated plot. But the result, first seen locally on June 8 as the final … » Read

OJAI, CA – “I don’t believe in borders” said Rhiannon Giddens at the outset of the 2023 Ojai Music Festival (June 8-11), an annual event in an edition unlike any other in recent memory. As music director of this … » Read

LONDON—Bucolic and genteel, the Glyndebourne Festival is synonymous with picnic hampers and champagne corks popping lazily in the sun. It’s seen as the playground of the idle rich but the truth lies deeper than that, for this elegant … » Read