Remember when Daniel Harding announced he would step down from a highly successful international conducting career to become a  commercial airline pilot with Air France? That was in January 2020, before Covid-19 threw all plans to the winds. … » Read

British pianist Stephen Hough has a question for classical music concertgoers. “Who,” he asks in The Guardian , “decreed that a concert of orchestral music should last roughly two hours with a gap in the middle in order for us … » Read

The reason for Perryn Leech’s  resignation from the Houston Grand Opera after 14 years now comes clear: He is to be the next general director of the Canadian Opera Company, effective March 1. He succeeds Alexander Neef, now the general … » Read

This list will be updated weekly. Note all times are in U.S. Eastern Time (ET). To calculate in other time zones or counties, British Summer Time (BST) is currently five hours ahead of ET and Central European Time (CET) is currently six hours … » Read

Sarah Bryan Miller, longtime staff music critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , died on November 28 after a long and courageous battle against cancer. She was 68. A onetime member of the Lyric Opera of Chicago Chorus, Bryan, as she preferred to … » Read

Most of the operas Donizetti wrote prior to his breakthrough success with  Anna Bolena  in 1830 are all but forgotten, despite his having already written around 30 of them by then. In recent years the Donizetti Opera Festival has been … » Read

The election of Joe Biden bodes well for an expansive role for the arts and culture in the new administration. “Things are going to change,” says Nina Ozlu Tunceli, executive director of the Americans for the Arts Action Fund. … » Read

Overlooked for far too long, the African American composer Florence Price is finally getting her due, thanks in no small part to the Philadelphia Orchestra and its music director. “The idea is that we’ll start a real Florence Price … » Read

MILAN (AP) — La Scala opera house announced Wednesday that it will broadcast a gala event featuring stars including Placido Domingo, Roberto Alagna and Jonas Kaufmann on the night of its traditional Dec. 7 season-opener, instead of the … » Read

Time was when the cancellation of two superstar tenors would send a producer of opera into a panic. But that was before the coronavirus, which at least has served to put catastrophic events in perspective as it renders live performances almost an … » Read