CHICAGO—Two years ago, when conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya signed on as music director for Chicago Opera Theater, she made her plans for the company very clear. A major goal was introducing audiences to new contemporary operas and neglected … » 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

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

PARIS—Pre-revolutionary Russia teemed with hereditary princes. The dramatis personae of War and Peace lists a dozen but there were hundreds more, not to mention counts and barons, most of them materially entitled as well as nominally … » Read

A film director, dressed in jeans, a hoody, and a blazer, paces the stage. The wings are exposed. Freestanding lights frame the dancers, posed in a tableau. The director circles the group, opening and closing a clapperboard. With each click, a … » Read

British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor was 11 when he won the 2004 BBC Young Musician of the Year and a mere 19 when he made his Proms debut playing Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto, thrilling the crowd with Morton Gould’s Boogie Woogie … » Read