Aidan Lang has announced his retirement as general director of the Welsh National Opera (WNO) at the end of this year. Perhaps spurred on by Arts Council England’s cuts to the WNO   and its touring program, Lang will be exiting after … » Read

BERLIN (AP) — Christian Thielemann has been chosen as the new general music director of Berlin’s Staatsoper, months after Daniel Barenboim ended his three-decade reign , the city government said Wednesday. The 64-year-old German … » Read

For those who have long bewailed the Metropolitan Opera’s neglect of new work, the current season, which opened last night with Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking , is a dream come true. It includes six works that premiered between 1986 … » Read

When Carlos Miguel Prieto took the podium this past weekend for his debut as music director of the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra (NCSO), his program featured both standard and new repertoire: Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, Haydn’s … » Read

The beleaguered musicians of the suddenly defunct Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (KWS) received some welcome news when the Grand Philharmonic Choir in Waterloo announced it would employ the players during its upcoming season. The choir, which has … » Read

Doppelganger can be seen as director Claus Guth’s attempt to create an opera that Franz Schubert never wrote. In the program booklet for his creation, Guth laments that the composer’s actual operas, with their inadequate librettos, … » Read

For the next few months composer Jake Heggie is going to be a very busy man. Dead Man Walking , his breakout opera of 2000, opens the Metropolitan Opera’s season this evening. Across the Lincoln Center Plaza three nights later, The Elements … » Read

Over three days beginning on Sept. 22, Jonathon Heyward began his much-anticipated tenure as the 13 th music director for The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra with a series of concerts for about 5,000 music lovers. Heyward is in many ways an … » Read

The Met Opera Orchestra is welcoming three new members as the season opens. Hannah Cope Johnson succeeds Emmanuel Ceysson as principal harp, arriving after a brief stint with the Sarasota Orchestra following graduate studies at the New England … » Read

The Boston-based White Snake Projects and its founder Cerise Lim Jacobs have a well-established reputation for cutting-edge ventures , so their recent performances of Monkey: A Kung Fu Puppet Parable raised expectations on the part of a critic … » Read