Performer: Jennifer Zetlan

Alan Gilbert reaches a pinnacle at the end of his tenure at the New York Philarmonic.

Clarinetist Kari Kriikku sauntered through the aisles of both the orchestra and audience, spinning around in two complete 360s and surely dousing the flabbergasted listeners in the floor seating with saliva.

The opera, directed by Mary Birnbaum, rotates through a cast of characters including Tonic, Dominant, and Subdominant as well as a be-wigged Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

The U.S. première of Richard Ayres’s No. 42 In the Alps was musically delightful, visually whimsical, and all-around hilarious.

32-year-old Nico Muhly recently tweeted “I'm obsessed with people asking why I must write such ‘atonal music.

Wagner famously idealized the concept of the “Gesamtkunstwerk”, a total work of art that incorporates many artistic media into a single piece. He would have appreciated Seattle Opera’s production of Götterdämmerung.