Instrument: Sound Design

The National Theater takes a bold step forward with a smart realization of a literary grotesquerie.

An evening of frivolousness and solemnity.

David Lang’s new opera the loser opened the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Wednesday night, but simply lacked theatricality.

On the eve of the Musikfest Berlin, Isabelle Faust’s performance of Luigi Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura was an extraordinary time capsule back to the work’s premiere in 1988.

Southbank Centre's The Rest is Noise festival came to an end with John Adams' oratorio El Niño, composed in 2000. The London Philharmonic Orchestra suited the piece well, and this was a performance to cherish.

My preparations for a Thursday evening trip to Lincoln Center: studying the super-formula of Stockhausen’s 29-hour opera project, entitled Licht; choosing an outfit in the perfect shade of cerulean; girding myself for a panic attack similar to the one I experienced the last time I witnessed a section from Licht (Oktophonie).

In an interview I had with composer Gabriela Ortíz last week, she confided that it was The Threepenny Opera – that cynical reflection of Weimar-era Germany – that was at the forefront of her mind while composing her latest opera.