LONDON--It is 72 years since George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel , his vision of a dystopian future where mass surveillance kept civilians under the strict control of an all-powerful state. When composer Mihkel Kerem read it, he … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO – Hobbled by the worldwide COVID-19 shutdown, Esa-Pekka Salonen is easing his way through his first season as music director of the San Francsico Symphony through digital-only programs. The first was the introductory … » Read

London’s Royal Opera House will finally reopen with socially distanced audiences on May 17. In the meantime, it continues its rewarding series of live streamed events with this April 9 double bill of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s … » Read

Pandemic programming has encouraged opera companies to reinvent themselves as TV or movie producers, but few have been as ingenious or as apposite as Seattle Opera with its new film of Jonathan Dove’s Flight . Written in 1998 by British … » Read

An insightful survey of works by Florence Price is one of four new albums exploring nearly a century of solo piano music by American composers. Born in 1887 in Little Rock, Price trained at the New England Conservatory before migrating to Chicago … » Read

Perhaps surprisingly, La Scala announced two weeks ago that it expects to close 2021 in the black. The secret to keeping the books in order without live performances for the last year (ticket sales account for a third of the house’s income) … » Read

To open her new album, the Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen revisits the role that provided her most recent operatic triumph. It’s a smart choice for this eclectic collection of arias and songs. As Leonore, the wife determined to free her … » Read

Extended lockdowns across Europe mean that the trend for performing opera in empty auditoriums continues apace with the Bayerische Staatsoper’s March 21 streamed premiere of Barrie Kosky’s quirky new staging of Der Rosenkavalier The … » Read

Gil Rose’s Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Musical America’s 2016 Ensemble of the Year , is on a mission to draw attention to important American works of the 20th and 21st centuries. It may be barred from live performance, but this … » Read

Curious about the state of the human psyche one year into a world-altering global pandemic? Look no farther than National Sawdust’s Hildegard Commission Concert, a program presenting new works by women, trans, and non-binary composers … » Read