For most stage directors, enticing audiences towards an appreciation of a work has always been something of an exercise in accommodation. That is, giving recherché knowledge the appropriate context. Style, epoch, provenance, language, politics, philosophy, etc., all amount to considerations that must be grappled with and reconciled, in one way or another, before an audience [...]

His “Nessun dorma” was the twentieth century’s definitive one—the one that launched a thousand imitators. So it caused a bit of a flurry this week when The Guardian reported on a new book about Luciano Pavarotti that says the tenor was lip-synching a performance of that aria at the 2006 Turin Olympics. Not feeling well [...]

If you want proof that the the borders of classical music just keep getting more porous, you need look no further than Three Lost Chords, a one-hour show that has been playing at the offbeat little Zipper Theater on Wednesdays and Sundays since March 23. The Zipper is a tiny space in the garment district [...]

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 [...]