Bigger is not necessarily better for opera companies dealing with a global pandemic. Since mid-March, when the Covid-19 coronavirus stopped the performing arts in their tracks, small, already innovative companies like NYC’s Heartbeat Opera … » Read

LOS ANGELES—We all know what to expect at gala concerts, those swanky affairs with premium ticket prices, celebrity guest soloists, safe repertoire, and grand dining to follow. So how do you translate that in COVID times, without a dressy … » Read

When the Metropolitan Opera announced its Met Stars Live in Concert recitals back in July 2020, the series was expected to have been done and dusted by Christmas. As it turned out, a series of cancellations and postponements, the combination of … » Read

Among the slew of recent choral albums and vocal recitals, many of them featuring new music, three in particular stand out for imaginative programming, virtuoso performances, and having something to say about the times in which we live. The … » Read

Contemporary chamber music seems to have thrived during the pandemic—at least if recorded output is anything to go by—and here are two of the most interesting. Mirrors is a diverse and strikingly inventive collection of 21st-century … » Read

In some ways, The Fall of the House of Usher , the Philip Glass chamber opera drawn from Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic horror story, is the perfect blank canvas for the Boston Lyric Opera’s wild and woolly virtual production, which opened … » Read

Nearly two decades separate John Adams’s Harmonielehre , one of the composer’s most popular pieces, from My Father Knew Charles Ives , one of his inexplicably less well-known works. The two appear hand in hand on an admirable new disc … » Read

MILAN--La Scala is late to the streaming game compared with many Italian opera houses. But recently it announced plans to stream one staged opera production, a ballet, and a concert each month, distributed live via the Raiplay platform and the … » Read

In November the Opéra-Comique began offering new productions of traditional repertoire for online viewing only. First up was Rameau’s  Hippolyte et Aricie.   On Jan. 19 came a second classic from the French Baroque, … » Read

Brash creativity has enabled the Atlanta Opera to continue performing before live audiences during the pandemic.  Working under an open-sided tent situated on a baseball field and observing strict public health protocols, last fall the … » Read