International

By James L. Paulk

SYDNEY - Pinchgut Opera's production of Cavalli's Giasone, evidently an Australian premiere, is deliciously witty, verging on burlesque and sung to the Baroque hilt by an all-Australian cast.

By James L. Paulk

MELBOURNE - Despite setbacks, including cancellations by a conductor and several key singers, Opera Australia's imaginative new production of Wagner's 'Ring' cycle was splendid from Rhinemaidens to immolation.

By Raymond Sokolov

LVIV, Ukraine -- The Warsaw Chamber Opera performed in Lviv, once a city of Poles, on the 95th anniversary of Polish independence, offering a heartrending romance, set in early-modern Poland, about a peasant girl who falls for the son of a rich landowner.

By Gil French

Aside from his seemingly obsessive over-commitment, Valery Gergiev is an artistic director who has his priorities right. In planning the Mariinsky II Theatre, he started with acoustics, or, as he put it, "Bad acoustics are a non-starter, a killer."

By Robert Markow

Singapore high school grads bound for other professions didn't want to give up their music, so they formed the self-governing Orchestra of the Music Makers. Five years later, they're still playing concerts and raising millions of dollars for charitable causes.

By John Rockwell

Spending a week this August in Salzburg, observing its plush glamour and fretting over its underlying indirection, leads me to the contemplation of its future and, more deeply, its mission. Both seem foggy at best.

By Gil French

The Musiktheater am Volksgarten houses a stage with multiple turntables, platforms and lifts, from which the farthest seat is about 80 feet. Its versatility was on full display for the world premiere of Spuren der Verirrten by Philip Glass.

By Scott Cantrell

This isn't a Ring year at Bayreuth, the playlist this summer comprising the other "major" operas. The renowned acoustics are indeed amazing, with a distinctive glow of resonance. Here's a 2012 Festival roundup -- Tannhäuser, Dutchman, Tristan, Parsifal and Lohengrin.

By MCANA Critics

In Bayreuth, members of the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA) experienced five operas in five days (August 18 – 23, 2012).

By Richard S. Ginell

The distance between Dresden and Leipzig is only 62 miles, and to see one city without visiting the other would seem to be an opportunity missed if you have the time.

By Richard S. Ginell

The distance between Dresden and Leipzig is only 62 miles, and to see one city without visiting the other would seem to be an opportunity missed if you have the time.  While they are amazingly similar in population currently – Dresden as of 2010 has 523,000 residents while Leipzig comes within a whisker of that total at 522,000! – and both have deep connections with the great composers, they are not twin cities.  Leipzig is more of a trade center with a more bustling street vibe; it was also a book

     Looking at Dresden today –  with the Baroque splendor of the restored Semperoper and Frauenkirche in the same neighborhood as drab Communist architecture and a modern indoor shopping mall off the Altmarkt that could be located anywhere – you are confronted with the abrupt clash between the very old, the very new, and the recent past. It is the home of Raphael's "Sistine Madonna;" the city where "Der Fliegende Holländer," "Tannhäuser,"