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

LONDON—Founded in 1996, Opera Holland Park (OHP) is one of British opera’s success stories. The company’s 1,000-seat canopied auditorium abuts Holland House, a once bomb-damaged Jacobean mansion located in open parkland in the … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO—Critical appreciation for Kaija Saariaho’s second opera, Adriana Mate r (and for her next two operas, as well) has lagged behind that for her first ( L’Amour de loin , 2000) and last (Innocence, 2018). But Adriana … » Read

LONDON--The Hallé has an unrivalled relationship with the music of Edward Elgar, and with The Dream of Gerontius in particular. Not only was the oratorio’s (notoriously underprepared) 1900 premiere led by the orchestra’s then … » Read

ATHENS – The Greek National Opera (GNO) opened the annual  Athens-Epidaurus Festival   on June 1 in the 5,000-seat Odeon of Herodes Atticus, an 1,800-year-old open-air performance space at the base of the Acropolis. An annual … » Read

LONDON—The years 1851-53 found Verdi in a hot vein of inspiration. Rigoletto and La traviata are indelible masterpieces in which Bel Canto and ardent romance merge into a potent mode of operatic expression; but what of Il trovatore ? Once … » Read