MILAN — The gala season premiere of Puccini’s Tosca starring Russian soprano Anna Netrebko and conducted by Riccardo Chailly received 15 minutes of applause from an audience of Milanese elite, in an evening that celebrated culture as … » Read

MILAN—St. Ambrose’s Day stands solidly on Europe’s cultural, social, and political calendar, marking the feast day of Milan’s patron saint, and the annual opening the city’s venerated opera house. Historically, the … » Read

Now in its sixth season, Heartbeat Opera has gained a reputation for radical adaptations and rearrangements that have sometimes boiled down standard works to around 90 minutes, in an effort to get closer to the essence of what they are about. To … » Read

Amsterdam based composer Aya Yoshida [pictured], 27, has won the little known but highly lucrative Zemlinsky Prize for her ten-minute piece, Double Face . She receives $30,000 and a commission for a new 15-minute orchestral work. Second and third … » Read

The Australian arts community is furious at Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s decision to subsume the government’s arts agency, already an add-on to the Department of Communications, into the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, … » Read

The warm, celebratory atmosphere of the Musical America Awards, deemed by many as the industry’s annual holiday party, belies the logistical challenges for the organizers. First, the event has to take place in December, when the annual … » Read

French conductor Alain Altinoglu, 44, is to succeed Andrés Orozco-Estrada as chief conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra as of 2021-22 for three seasons. Orozco-Estrada is headed to the helm of the Vienna Symphony, starting … » Read

Deutsche Welle , the German state-owned international broadcaster, has launched a dedicated classical music YouTube channel, timed to coincide with Beethoven’s 250 th birthday celebrations. Effective immediately, DW Classical Music will … » Read

On Dec. 5 the other shoe dropped for Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo when the Royal Opera announced his firing following an investigation of an incident this past September in Tokyo. Grigolo allegedly groped a female chorister during the curtain … » Read

Eun Sun Kim is to be the music director of the San Francisco Opera as of August 2021 and takes the title designate immediately. Kim, 39, was Musical America’s June 2018 New Artist of the Month , and is well known in European opera circles, … » Read