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

LOS ANGELES—Verdi’s great, penultimate opera Otello will always occupy a special place in the history of Los Angeles Opera. It was the company’s opening production in October 1986, an event that in hindsight shattered the … » Read

The 2023 Long Play Festival, May 5-7, emerged as a major event of the spring season, a 50-plus-performance cross-section of New York’s alt-classical sphere and its pioneers. Produced by Bang on a Can’s Julia Wolfe, David Lang, Michael … » Read

Ivo van Hove is controversial. Some love his overall work or individual productions. Others hate him/them. So even with interviews and some advance warning from his new staging of Don Giovanni in 2019 at the Paris Opera, the co-producer with the … » Read

LONDON—Raw poetry doesn’t always make a coherent stage work, but Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife is a bracing exception. Her scabrous, thought-provoking, and frequently witty 1999 collection exploring women sidelined by … » Read

Until recently, gay characters in plays, motion pictures, novels, and even operas generally did not fare well. They were often the first to perish or to suffer unrequited love in more serious works—e.g., the plays of Tennessee Williams. … » Read

LONDON—English National Opera’s conceptualization of Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 was dreamily beautiful to behold. In a work that deals in pain and anguish, that may not necessarily have been a good thing. And yet… … » Read

Puccini’s La bohème is a staple of the opera world, and it takes a very bold director to tinker around with it. Enter Yuval Sharon, a 2017 MacArthur Genius Grant awardee and current artistic director of the Detroit Opera who in  … » Read