LONDON—Making your La Scala debut and opening the show at the same time must be about as nerve-wracking as it gets, but on the first night of Robert Carsen’s new Peter Grimes , William Thomas took it in his stride. Not only did he … » Read

Long Beach Opera, an ambitious and occasionally audacious opera company with an annual operating budget of about $2 million, has received $1.25M from the estate of late (d. 2021) board member Carol Richards, the largest single gift in the … » Read

Canada Council for the Arts has chosen cellist Bryan Cheng as recipient of its 2023 Virginia Parker Prize . The annual award, which goes to a distinguished classical instrumentalist or conductor under the age of 32, comes with a $25,000CAD prize. … » Read

Five years ago Colston Hall, a concert venue in the center of Bristol that dated from 1867, was in desperate condition. “We had a building that was about to fall down," Louis Mitchell, chief executive of the Bristol Music Trust, tells the … » Read

Stanford Live, the multi-genre performing arts presenter at Stanford University, has named Iris Nemani, chief programming officer of Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre, as its next director. She arrives in April and succeeds Chris Lorway, who … » Read

Following several months of sometimes fractious negotiations , the New York City Ballet and its 63-member orchestra have reached a three-year agreement. Subject to approval by members of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, the new … » Read

The hands-down musical climax of Maestro is the recreation of the 1973 performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 by the London Symphony Orchestra in Ely Cathedral. Although shot over a three-day period, three years of painstaking preparation … » Read

The San Francisco Symphony’s Nov. 24 premiere of Odisea ( Odyssey ), a new concerto for the cuatro by Venezuelan composer Gonzalo Grau, proved to be a special occasion for the San Francisco Chronicle’s chief classical music critic. It … » Read

Opus 3 Artists, purchased by the San Francisco of Music (SFCM) three years ago, will widen its roster of vocal artists by incorporating the 40 singers and two conductors on the roster of Magnum Opus Artists (MOA), a New Jersey-based firm … » Read

TOKYO—Right from its opening in 1997, the New National Theatre, Tokyo has specialized in lavish international productions—Franco Zeffirelli’s Aida and Wolfgang Wagner’s Lohengrin set the tone in its inaugural … » Read