Part of the month-long reopening of David Geffen Hall—actually now an entire  building, since the revamped concert hall has been named the Wu Tsai Theater —was last Saturday’s premiere of jazz artist and composer Etienne … » Read

This month sees a clutch of new releases featuring orchestral and chamber music by three contrasting but uniquely original American voices, each composer a generation apart. George Walker Hot on the heels of the National Symphony Orchestra and … » Read

LONDON—In the wrong hands, even an expensive-looking production can seem parochial. Take this new Tosca from English National Opera. The settings by distinguished designer Christian Schmidt are solid-state and convincing; however, they … » Read

It’s not easy to find negative things to say about the season premiere of Idomeneo at the Metropolitan Opera on September 28, the second night of its new season. But isn’t it time to retire Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s 40-year-old … » Read

A performance? An art installation? Or a secular ritual fashioned for the post-pandemic 21st century? All definitions loosely apply, but especially the ritual definition in Monochromatic Light (Afterlife), a new work playing at New York’s … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO  — John Adams has not tired of defying expectations. Nowhere is this more evident than in his works for the stage, which tend to trigger the most heated, even contradictory, critical reactions. Antony and Cleopatra , his … » Read

The title role of Medea must be one of opera’s most challenging, and when Cherubini’s 1797 work finally arrived at the Met Opera on Tuesday for the beginning of the company’s 137 th season, Sondra Radvanovsky triumphantly met … » Read

LONDON—When it comes to the Royal Opera’s Verdi, gray is the new Technicolor. The rot set in nine years ago with a Nabucco of the utmost dreariness, a gloom surpassed in 2016 by its most recent Il trovatore . However, with this new … » Read

Puccini’s La bohème , a staple of the opera world for more than a century, begins with a budding romance and concludes with a tragic death. What would happen, wondered the iconoclastic director Yuval Sharon, if the story was told in … » Read

LONDON—Last year, Edward Gardner  opened the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s season with Michael Tippett’s glorious, yet rarely performed opera, The Midsummer Marriage . If that proved the incoming principal … » Read