Experiencing the music of Richard Wagner can be excruciating, something even the composer himself admitted. While finishing Tristan and Isolde, Wagner predicted that the final act is "bound to drive people mad."
Although I attended the 1987 world premiere of Nixon in China (and saw subsequent performances in 1988 and 1990), last month marked the first time I had seen Nixon in China in 22 years. A lot has happened in the interim.
HOUSTON -- One of the grandest of grand operas, Verdi's "Don Carlos" is rarely performed with every note of music the composer wrote for its 1867 prem...
During the performance, I detected shifts of uneasiness and stifled sobs emanating from an audience largely comprised of Persian émigrés; the premiere was met with an irrepressible standing ovation.
There is one opera I want to see in 2012:Willie Stark by Carlisle Floyd. Opera companies are missing the boat if they do not produce it this year.
I have been known to cut a rug to "Hava Nagila" at the right moment, but was this really what I needed to hear while waiting for a breast exam? I found it hard to sit still and focus on the task at hand so I found myself pacing. I had to step back and ask myself, why?
In 1964, when a new musical based on the tales of Sholem Aleichem began its pre-Broadway tryout in Detroit, the producers feared the show might be "to...
Whether deploying a chorus line of Ku Klux Klansmen, mocking every symbol of Christianity, or filling the theatre with nonstop profanity, Jerry Springer:The Opera has something to offend everyone.
