When’s the last time you went to a concert where the average age in the audience was twelve? Last week, I—along with 800 elementary and intermediate public school students—went to LaGuardia High School of Music, Art, and the Performing Arts for a daytime performance of Purcell’s short opera Dido and Aeneas. This was a commission [...]

As an avowed opera-goer, my preferred locale is Manhattan’s Upper West Side. I’ll readily admit that I have painfully little patience for the throngs of tourists that make the Theater District an ambling, sight-seen garish miasma on the order of a mid-town Ellis Island. (“Give me your fanny-packed, your Drakkar Noir spritzed, your huddled masses [...]

During the past year, one of the upbeat stories in the classical-music business has been the proliferation of opera in movie theaters. The Metropolitan Opera, under its new general manager, Peter Gelb, jump-started this trend last season with its high-definition simulcasts, which have proved so successful that now other opera houses—including Royal Opera, Covent Garden; [...]

One of the most exciting things about the arts is experimentation—and that includes the occasional brave failure. I realize this is America, where some consider failure to be akin to some kind of moral deficiency, but bear with me for a second and please read on! You see, experimentation means boldly going where blah blah [...]

…Continued from Part 1 Shu-Ying Li describes herself modestly as just “a Chinese girl trying to be a Japanese girl.” This week, she is at the end of a run of six performances at New York City Opera in the title role of Madama Butterfly, perhaps the most famous Japanese character in all of opera. [...]

Shu-Ying Li modestly describes herself as just “a Chinese girl trying to be a Japanese girl.” This week, she wraps up a run of six performances at the New York City Opera in the title role of Madama Butterfly, perhaps the most famous Japanese character in all of opera. Over the past few years, Cio-Cio [...]