Offerings at the Salzburg Festival are so wide ranging that a uniform theme is often impossible to discern, but this summer its seems to be classical mythology. And what better diversion from the travails of Medea and Oedipus than an Offenbach … » Read

SALZBURG--The Grosses Festpielhaus was the venue for Simon Stone’s new production of Cherubini’s Médée ( Medea ), a less successful exercise in updating (seen on August 16) than the previous evening’s Simon … » Read

SALZBURG--The summer Salzburg Festival has not had much experience with Simon Boccanegra. Prior to this summer, the opera—one of Verdi’s most noble, moving, and serious—was staged here only once, in a 1961 production by Herbert … » Read

SALZBURG-- In contrast to what Idomeneo had to endure, Salzburg’s other opera seria of the summer, Handel’s Alcina at the Haus für Mozart starring Cecilia Bartoli, had to contend merely with the expected foibles of a trendy … » Read

SALZBURG--Climate change is on people’s minds today, as well it should be. It’s a hard case to make through the medium of opera, particular an 18th-century opera, but in his new production of Mozart’s Idomeneo at the Salzburg … » Read

“Mostly Mozart” might seem an unlikely fit for Brooklyn Rider, an ensemble better known for Muhly and Mehldau and whose cross-genre explorations of bluegrass and pop have seen them dabbling in Kate Bush and Björk. But as … » Read

FISHTAIL, MT— The vast, roiling orchestral soundscape of the Prize-winning Become Ocean has served many listeners as an entrée into the world of John Luther Adams. A number of other compositions and installations cast on a large … » Read

New voices; new sounds; new worlds. It’s an ambitious ask for a projected 75-minute concert, but if anyone can deliver it would be ICE. In the event, the International Contemporary Ensemble, a lineup of America’s brightest and bravest … » Read

NEW YORK – In 2013, the National Youth Orchestra of the United States (NYO-USA) was born—created at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute to give orchestral training to students ages 16-to-19 from all over the country. In 2013, … » Read

Among the plethora of operas having their world premieres by American opera companies this summer, several take on racially charged subjects. Last month Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones , based on a memoir by New York Times … » Read