Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | George Manahan

Benjamin Britten's comic slice of country life proves an ideal choice for the conservatory setting.

With classical works by jazz artists Iverson, Lehman and Assad, American Composers Orchestra wound up its fortieth anniversary season, and looked ahead to continued adventures in diversity.

Washington National Opera continues its cycle of social justice operas.

A new operatic adaptation of Dream of the Red Chamber by Bright Sheng and David Henry Hwang offers musical and visual delights but stumbles on the text.

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale about a great conservatory production of Ariadne auf Naxos, with wonderful singing and visual delights aplenty.

Although opera, as a genre, is easily celebrated for its capacity to move and transport an audience, it is rare to be emotionally disturbed by one. Tobias Picker’s Dolores Claiborne, which received its world première by the San Francisco Opera this week, achieves such a feat. In doing so, it will certainly garner notoriety, both as well-deserved praise and well-deserved condemnation.

“What a funny kind of fairy tale we’ve gotten into!” proclaims one of the characters in Elegy for Young Lovers, Hans Werner Henze’s odd 1963 opera. The audience may sympathize. W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman’s libretto of an uninspired poet in search of a new muse is not standard operatic fare.

Goosebumps, gasps of horror, sobs and tears. That's what operagoers will experience at the East Coast premiere of Séance on a Wet Afternoon presented by New York City Opera. It is an eerie, emotional roller coaster of a show that grips you with the force of demon possession and doesn’t let go.