The Kennedy Center is celebrating its 50 th anniversary (plus one pandemic year) with a new production of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass , which inaugurated the Center for the Performing Arts in September of 1971. Bernstein’s work, … » Read

The University of Pennsylvania has announced plans to build a new theater, to be named for its primary donor, Stuart Weitzman, that will be connected to the south side of the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. The Center, recently … » Read

Though his official 150 th birthday doesn’t fall until 2023, Sergei Rachmaninoff appears to be on presenters’ minds of late. Popular with audiences, historically dismissed by critics, his music is OK to like these days, at least … » Read

CHICAGO—Once the curtain goes up, most opera lovers have little trouble suspending belief. A change of heart by a ruthless king who suddenly decides to pardon a gang of assassins gathered to kill him? Check. After heaping scorn on unwelcome … » Read

Jorja Fleezanis, concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra from 1989-2009, died unexpectedly on September 9 at her home in Michigan at the age of 70. The cause, according to the orchestra, was “a cardiovascular event.”   The … » Read

The death of Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 8 prompted the BBC to cancel the Last Night of the Proms on Sept. 10 as well as the penultimate concert scheduled for the previous evening by the Philadelphia Orchestra. The monarch, a Patron of the Royal … » Read

At the Oregon Symphony, Clement So [pictured] has succeeded Charles Calmer as VP for programming. So arrives from the San Diego Symphony, where he was VP for artistic planning for five years. Before that he was artistic administrator of New … » Read

A centennial is a time to reflect on past accomplishments, and the San Francisco Opera (SFO)  at one hundred has much to celebrate. But such moments also invite a look to the future to identify new challenges and opportunities that will … » Read

It was Nietzsche who suggested that Bayreuth was a werkstatt , or workshop. And in the past few decades, the festival has been transformed into a laboratory for experimental productions featuring highly advanced forms of  Regietheater, where … » Read

Last year Michael Spyres appeared in New York with another tenor of notable bel canto accomplishment, Lawrence Brownlee, in a dazzling, even over-the-top display of vocal acrobatics by each. The event had the added attraction of revealing … » Read