International

By Robert Markow

OSAKA – Every three years Japan is host to three interlocking global chamber music contests, including one of the world's Top Four for string quartets and the fan-judged Festa, at Musikverein-inspired Izumi Hall.

By George Loomis

DRESDEN - Following Claudio Abbado's death, the Dresden Music Festival turned the conductor's scheduled appearance into a June memorial in the Frauenkirche, with an orchestra that sprouted from his efforts.

By Rebecca Schmid

DRESDEN – As part of the 150th anniversary celebration of Richard Strauss, the Dresden State Opera and Dresden Music Festival collaborated on a semi-staged production of the composer's early opera Feuersnot.

By Susan Brodie

Robert Carsen's circus-themed Rigoletto in Brussels, Andreas Kriegenburg's shattering Die Soldaten in Munich and Herbert Wernicke's joyful staging of Bach's Actus Tragicus in Stuttgart highlight a bracing operatic spring.

James L. Paulk

A quick sampling of European opera houses left mixed impressions, from a wondrous Berlioz production at La Scala and Henze's rarely performed Elegy for Young Lovers at La Fenice to a radical take on Bizet at the Komische Oper.

By Susan Brodie

STRASBOURG – L'Opéra National du Rhin scooped a rarity of the Opéra de Paris 2014-15 season with Le Roi Arthus. But the mixed-era production was cartoonish and the cast struggled with Wagnerian vocal demands.

By Patrick J. Smith

NEW YORK - In a highlight of the New York operatic season, Carnegie Hall's Vienna: City of Dreams festival gave Wozzeck and Salome in consecutive concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic, Welser-Möst and Nelsons conducting.

By Susan Brodie

MADRID - Brokeback Mountain, a new opera by Charles Wuorinen and Annie Proulx about forbidden love between two ranch hands, echoes Wyoming's mountain grandeur. But one longs for a character to sing his heart out.

By John W. Lambert

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - The English Concert is touring the U.S. and Europe with Handel's Theodora, led by Harry Bicket. It's a trans-oceanic artistic endeavor with the Choir of Trinity Wall Street holding up the Yankee side.

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