Matthew Gurewitsch
Curtain Up on a New Era
The Lyric Opera of Chicago’s incoming music director, Enrique Mazzola, strives for golden-age excellence—and a new populism
Opera Pick of the Week
More Verdi from Muti’s La Scala: the Spanish tragedy Il Trovatore
Opera Pick of the Week
As the Metropolitan Opera returns to live performance, an easy fix for fans hooked on the company’s once-complimentary nightly streams
Opera Pick of the Week
Double déjà vu all over again: Il Trovatore, Verdi’s warhorse in excelsis, live from Los Angeles, with dueling heroes and two modern-day knights
Opera Pick of the Week
From San Francisco Opera, a bold new reading of Beethoven’s soul-stirring political thriller Fidelio
A Classicist at Heart
Whatever it might mean for him to “play the race card,” the tenor Russell Thomas isn’t having any
Opera Pick of the Week
If you liked The Bride of Frankenstein, you’ll love Charles Gounod’s Gothic thriller La Nonne Sanglante
Opera Pick of the Week
What’s better, sex or salvation? Tannhäuser, Wagner’s schizophrenic singer of courtly love songs, simply cannot decide
Opera Pick of the Week
Love hurts in Jenůfa, Leoš Janáček’s tragedy from the hinterlands of Moravia, brought to thrilling life at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London
Opera Pick of the Week
From Brussels, The Time of Our Singing, an operatic mixed-race American family saga, speaks to our historical moment with an eloquence that transcends it
Opera Pick of the Week
With the recital album Baritenor, the singer-scholar Michael Spyres mines music history for sheer delight
Opera Pick of the Week
From San Francisco, an intriguing new take on Così fan tutte, Mozart’s politically scandalous, musically sublime comedy of deception
Opera Pick of the Week
Unseen at the Paris Opera since its premiere in 1936, Georges Enesco’s Œdipe returns in a heaven-sent staging by Wajdi Mouawad
Opera Pick of the Week
From Adolphe Adam, composer of the tragic ballet Giselle, an operatic soap bubble starring a postman with a knockout high D
Opera Pick of the Week
Tesla sings! Les Éclairs at the Opéra Comique, in Paris, takes liberties with the biography of the Serbian visionary, to electric effect
Opera Pick of the Week
The world-premiere telecast of Gian Carlo Menotti’s evergreen Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors resurfaces
Theater Pick of the Week
From Shakespeare’s Globe, in London, an Elizabethan Twelfth Night for the ages
Born to Sing Verdi
Hawaiian star baritone Quinn Kelsey anchors the Met’s new Rigoletto
I Do! I Do!
Love finds a way in The Bartered Bride, starring Teresa Stratas
What Color is Your Parachute?
As Mark Rothko in the award-winning Red, Alfred Molina tackles the big questions
One Maestro, One Diva, No Elephants
Riccardo Muti and Anna Netrebko put a Salzburg Aida over the top
Pop Royalty
Little-known paintings by Dame Vera Lynn, “the Forces’ Sweetheart,” whose songs buoyed morale during World War II, go on display in her hometown
When the Cat’s Away …
The mice run wild in Ben Jonson’s knockabout sitcom The Alchemist
Smoking Gun at the Ballets Russes
Did the young George Balanchine steal from a certain senior colleague?