LONDON--Ten years have passed since the current boss of Garsington Opera took over and transformed it from a middling country house festival into a plausible pretender to the Glyndebourne throne. During his tenure, the charismatic Scottish … » Read

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gave this year’s edition of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition a distinctively political dimension. After organizers agreed to welcome the 15 (out of 72) Russian-born contenders to the U.S for … » Read

Edvard Grieg’s widely popular Peer Gynt is most often performed in one of the composer’s two orchestral suites (written in 1888 and 1893), derived from the incidental music he wrote for Heinrik Ibsen’s 1876 play of the same … » Read

CHICAGO—Haymarket Opera Company, a small Chicago troupe presenting Baroque opera on period instruments, doesn’t shy away from big challenges. Last year, in the middle of the pandemic, the company celebrated its tenth anniversary with … » Read

It’s best not to look too closely at the plots of classical ballets. Rather than try to reason through the unrequited relationships, fairies, and blurred lines between animals and humans, it’s better to just let the stories be what … » Read

For 75 years, the Ojai Music Festival, located in the Ojai Valley north of Los Angeles, has presented a three-day weekend packed full of performances curated by a music director chosen for a one-year term. More often than not, an individual has … » Read

LONDON--With its quaint local color and swirling cinematic dramaturgy, The Adventures of Mr. Broucek is the trickiest of Janácek’s operas to pull off. Get it wrong and it comes across as a rambling bit of folkish whimsy, or worse, an … » Read

Before Awakenings was a new opera by Tobias Picker, premiering at Opera Theater of St. Louis last week, it was a ballet, with a score also by Picker (completely different from the opera), as well as a 1990 film starring Robert DeNiro, and the … » Read

“Citizens: Listen! Look!” With that arresting command, declaimed from the stage of Davies Symphony Hall by actress Breezy Leigh, a June 11 San Francisco Symphony program devoted to Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex and Symphony of Psalms … » Read

MILAN--While Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Gioconda was an instant hit when it premiered at La Scala in 1876, the opera is rarely performed today. Casting its six big leading roles is no easy task, and barely credible elements of the story, not … » Read