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By Colin Eatock

TORONTO - Three of Canada's best choral ensembles combined into a 60-voice "super choir" of supple flexibility to perform music of Latvian composer Uģis Prauliņš and counterparts from Finland, Poland, Norway and Canada.

By Arthur Kaptainis

A lot of money was riding on the outcome Sunday evening. I refer, of course, to the duration of "The Star-Spangled Banner" as sung by Renée Fleming. One popular over/under betting line was two minutes, 25 seconds.

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 Rick Schultz

"It is good to have friends," the Spanish proverb goes, "even in hell." Gidon Kremer, on U.S. tour with Kremerata Baltica, thinks a close bond helped Dmitri Shostakovich and Mieczysław Weinberg thrive in brutal times: "They met in the imagination."

By Richard S. Ginell

SAN PEDRO, CA - It would figure that a musician with the colossal ambition and fearlessness of Duke Ellington would think to write an opera, but few know that he actually did, sort of. Long Beach Opera shows plucky spirit by fleshing out Queenie Pie.

By Leslie Kandell

NEW YORK - "A cappella male quartet" is a phrase that suggests mellow guys crooning in seersucker jackets and straw boaters. But none of that applies to the Hilliard Ensemble, who are a long way from barbershop. At 40, the group says this year's the last.

By Mike Greenberg

HOUSTON - Mieczysław Weinberg’s long-forgotten opera The Passenger, in which a surprise encounter forces a woman to face her Auschwitz past, has arrived at Houston Grand Opera in the premiere production from Bregenz, Warsaw, London and Madrid.

By Perry Tannenbaum

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Founded in 1948 on a shoestring budget of $125, Opera Carolina is presenting Puccini's "Il trittico" complete for the first time in its 65th anniversary season. But two of its component one-acts are deep in the company's DNA.

By Robert P. Commanday

ROHNERT PARK, CA - The culture gods are smiling on California's Sonoma County. Wu Man gave the U.S. premiere of Zhao Jiping's Concerto No. 2 for Pipa in Weill Hall, where the Santa Rosa Symphony thrives.

By Gail Wein

NEW YORK - All eyes and ears will be on Judith LeClair, longtime principal bassoon of the New York Philharmonic, when she plays Mozart's Bassoon Concerto with the orchestra Jan. 16-22. This time, she has a brand new cadenza.

By Kyle MacMillan

CHICAGO -- Lyric Opera of Chicago deserves credit for taking a risk on a new, unconventional production of Richard Wagner's Parsifal. It has its weaknesses, but it also offers a refreshing take on this valedictory work.

By Paul Hyde

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- The Greenville Symphony's remembrance program, led by Russian-born music director Edvard Tchivzhel, was part of the city's Year of Altruism, a local all-volunteer celebration of compassion and diversity.

By David Gordon Duke

SEATTLE - Ludovic Morlot, the Seattle Symphony's music director, showed a penchant for adventurous programming with the pairing of Boulez's Notations I-V and Mahler's Symphony No. 6 at Benaroya Hall.

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.

I first heard the New Orford Quartet last winter, under less-than-ideal conditions: in a pre-concert performance at a Toronto Symphony concert, in the lobby of Roy Thomson Hall. With the inevitable background noise, it was hard to hear every nuance of their performance – but I heard enough to want to hear them again. So when I learned that the New Orfords would be playing a concert at Gallery 345, a warehouse space in Toronto’s West End, I made plans to attend. Unfortunately, very few other people made similar plans.

  The tourist map of Bayreuth immediately plunges one into the deep Bavarian world of Richard Wagner. To get to the Festspielhaus, get yourself to Kaiser Wilhelm Square, reachable via Friedrich V. Schiller Street, Karl Marx Street, or Goethe Street. From there proceed up Nibelungen Street, cross Meistersinger Street. At the junction of Parsifal Street and Tristan  Street the avenue enters the park and becomes Siegfried Wagner Allee. Instead of entering the park you can proceed to the right along Tristan Street, then turn right

Preview: Music director Riccardo Muti announced a sprawling season at Symphony Center, including an exploration of the impact of the world's great waterways on...

     This has been a year of centenaries for a number of 20th-century podium giants born in 1912 – Georg Solti, Kurt Sanderling (who missed his 100th by just a year), Igor Markevitch, Sergiu Celibidache – all of whom still have their fame, or at least a cult. Yet a fifth, Erich Leinsdorf (1912-1993), remains in a curious state of limbo, not exactly reviled but not particularly loved.  One wonders why.  Perhaps his outspoken ways, of not suffering fools or even worthy adversaries kindly, often expressed

John Adams' Nixon in China, finally performed here in San Francisco to considerable acclaim, is a great opera, but not in the usual way

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