LONDON--Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers has a reputation as the only English opera of note between Purcell and Britten, and yet it’s hardly ever staged. There was a pioneering recording made nearly 30 years ago and the Bard Music … » Read

“My Lord, what a morning,” sang soprano Julia Bullock at the top of “History’s Persistent Voice, ” her deeply affecting, sometimes disturbing and always full-hearted work created for solo voice and orchestra. … » Read

If you’ve ever had the privilege of talking with Steve Reich, you’ll know the thoughts come thick and fast—so fast sometimes you can barely keep up. The beauty of Conversations is how all that wisdom and knowledge has been … » Read

The BBC Symphony Orchestra’s May 13 concert at London’s Barbican Centre managed to field two premieres while celebrating four composer anniversaries. Two were major birthdays—César Franck’s 200th and Ralph Vaughan … » Read

If the sense of ambiguity that pervades Shakespeare’s Hamlet is what makes it so compelling a drama, it is also what makes it so challenging to an interpreter, be it a teller, a listener, a director, or a composer. Many of the last group … » Read

LONDON--“Life is precious,” wrote Michael Tilson Thomas back on March 2. He was referring to his ongoing treatment for Glioblastoma Multiforme, a form of aggressive brain cancer. The conductor underwent an operation to remove what was … » Read

"Serse is not Handel’s only comic opera, as it has sometimes been described,” according to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera , with the implication that there are others. But it can more aptly be claimed that he wrote no truly comic … » Read

The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Pan-American Music Initiative got underway in 2020 but got sidelined, like everything else, by the pandemic. Now it has taken the form of a five-year project of music from the Western Hemisphere, including the … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO--Melody was in full bloom at Davies Symphony Hall on May 5, in the first of three San Francisco Symphony concerts led by guest conductor Xian Zhang. Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9 (From the New World) alone would have been … » Read

Any new offering from composer Osvaldo Golijov is welcome after his years of silence, during which he worked on any number of projects although reportedly not to his satisfaction. Small wonder, given the success of the brilliant musical fusions … » Read