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Alison Moritz's alluring production of The Abduction from the Seraglio for Lyric Opera of Kansas City

Dead Man Walking is currently the most frequently performed contemporary American opera. Joel Ivany's staging, first mounted in Vancouver, opened recently at Minnesota Opera just days after the opera's Spanish première in Madrid. 

Mason Bates's much-hyped first opera, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, excited Santa Fe audiences despite its dramatic shortcomings.

American composer Jake Heggie's early opera performed by Washington National Opera was one of those rare experiences of an opera full of raw power and wrenching emotion with superb performers that one is not likely to forget soon.

Highly idiomatic and effective singing by Greer Grimsley, Denyce Graves and other cast members, coupled with inventive stagecraft wizardry, make the Minnesota Opera's first-ever Rheingold a memorable production.

Silent Night by Kevin Puts closes L'Opéra de Montréal's 2014-2015 season and is notable for revealing a formidable all-Canadian cast of principals.

The bits of conversation I overheard during intermission and in the aisles after the world première of Mark Adamo’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene at San Francisco Opera were assorted variations of “so, what did you think?” World premières are, indeed, auspicious occasions that privilege first-nighters to experience the work before anyone else has molded or influenced their thoughts about it.

A work crucial to the development and appreciation of opera as a relevant modern art form premièred on the East Coast to well-deserved acclaim at a legendary Philadelphia venue. From the first note out of the pit orchestra to the final strains of the last act, Silent Night, presented by Opera Philadelphia at the Academy of Music, was a tour de force – from conception to execution.