LONDON—Founded in 1989 by impresario Leonard Ingrams, Garsington Opera has a well-earned reputation as one of the U.K.’s savviest summer opera festivals. Relocating in 2011 to the grounds of Wormsley Park in the lush Oxfordshire … » Read

On May 16, at St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, the Choir of Men and Boys (accompanied by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s) premiered its alumnus Trevor Weston’s American Lamentations , a 12-movement, 40-minute concert work confronting … » Read

GLYNDEBOURNE, East Sussex—Glyndebourne’s new Don Giovanni has divided the London critics and to be frank it has divided this critic too. Recent history is partly to blame: too many sub-par productions of an opera that has been dubbed … » Read

CHICAGO—In his final concerts as music director, Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra are sampling the best of all possible orchestral worlds. True, he won’t be ending his 13-year tenure in late June with a Verdi opera; … » Read

COSTA MESA, CA – Over the decades, every Long Beach Opera regime has managed to spin new, often wild variations on what opera is and can be. It’s been that way with this congenitally radical company since the early 1980s as artistic … » Read

With its opening volley of concussive orchestral thuds and clanking percussion, Bodies on the Line: The Great Flint Sit-Down Strike delivers the assaultive sound and feel of a 1930s automobile assembly line. In doing so, this ambitious, hour-long … » Read

LONDON—Perhaps the bleakest opera of them all, certainly the most harrowing, Alban Berg’s taut, 95-minute Wozzeck is the study of one man’s decline into a terrifying inner darkness. Episodes of degradation and humiliation … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO—The fusion of mortal pain and divine consolation, macabre marches and murmurous chants, a centuries-old Latin mass text and the World War I-era fury of Wilfred Owen’s verse take hold early in Benjamin Britten’s … » Read

A miniature Mozart festival has burst forth in the final weeks of the Metropolitan Opera’s season, with two new productions appearing in as many weeks, each staged by a debuting director from abroad who is better known here for work in … » Read

PRAGUE—Mahler’s First Symphony can be a tricky beast to program. Not quite long enough to stand alone, it’s capable of overshadowing a lightweight concerto, or worse, competing for attention with another showboat work. This May … » Read