Innocence by the late Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho has made an impact that few other recent operas can match. Following its premiere at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2021, Saariaho’s dramatization (with a multilingual libretto … » Read

LONDON—Premiered on Good Friday 1727, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion followed on from the St. John Passion of 1724. What would have struck the Leipzig congregation immediately, however, was the sheer ambition of the new work, one composed … » Read

In her role as principal guest conductor, Marin Alsop led the Philadelphia Orchestra in the local premiere of John Adams’s The Rock You Stand On at Carnegie Hall on March 31, part of the hall’s semiquincentennial series, “United … » Read

LOS ANGELES—Two reimaginings of portions of Philip Glass’ so-called Cocteau trilogy came to California during the month of March.  Hot on the heels of Opera Parallèle’s innovative multimedia production of the … » Read

LONDON—The current season marks the 400 th anniversary of the death of John Dowland, the English composer, lutenist, and singer who came to personify the Elizabethan embrace of melancholia. To celebrate, Wigmore Hall invited countertenor … » Read

MANCHESTER—California-born Finnish-American conductor Aku Sorensen has won the 2026 Siemens Hallé International Conductors Competition. The 29-year-old, who has lived in Finland for the last ten years, clinched the win with a … » Read

LONDON—Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw is a masterpiece, so seamlessly does the composer integrate music and text to create a gripping piece of music drama. It is not, however, indestructible. A successful production needs to … » Read

LONDON—The later compositions of Jean Sibelius are succinct, stripped back as they are to the essentials of musical expression until his final symphony, the Seventh, delivered its profound dialectic in 20 uninterrupted minutes. Yet only 32 … » Read

LOS ANGELES—Irish composer Gerald Barry’s wonderfully outlandish operas used to arrive at Walt Disney Concert Hall with regularity every five years, starting in 2006 with The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit , followed by The Importance … » Read

LONDON—The idea of reimagining the Easter story through the eyes of a woman is a good one (see John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary ). Commissioned by Scotland’s Dunedin Consort, along with the Barbican Centre and … » Read