This season, the Metropolitan Opera has attracted a lot of attention with edgy productions of controversial modern operas like Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer and Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. But those nostalgic for the old Met—productions with sumptuous period…

This week, the Metropolitan Opera revived Graham Vick’s production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the 1934 opera that infuriated Stalin, and nearly cost the composer his livelihood and his sanity. The opera is a dark tragic-comedy,…

With exquisitely bad timing, and amid furious protests, this week the Metropolitan Opera premiered a new version of John Adams’ controversial opera, The Death of Klinghoffer. The opera focuses on the 1985 murder of a disabled American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer,…

For the past 25 years, the Bard Summer Music Festival has offered classical music lovers a unique way to spend summer vacations: two weekends in August packed with concerts and lectures focused on the life and work of one composer….

Once again, the Bard Summer Music Festival has lived up to its reputation for giving classical music lovers a chance to hear lesser known or underperformed gems of the operatic repertory. This summer it has taken on one of German…

Just in time for the Sochi Olympics, the Metropolitan Opera has premiered a new version of Alexander Borodin’s sweeping historical opera, Prince Igor. Based on a medieval Russian poem about a military campaign against hostile tribes from the Steppes, it…

Having grown up in the era of “You’ve come a long way, baby,” I find it downright weird to hear the current appeals to women voters based on abortion and free contraceptives. After working so hard and coming so far,…