Zachary Woolfe
Posts
John Cage Shock: When Japan Fell for Cage and Vice Versa
After a 1962 visit, a mutual love affair began between the composer and the country’s musicians. A new series at the Japan Society explores this...
Review: In Berlin, Opera Scales Up to Fill an Airport Hangar
With its home theater under renovation, the Komische Oper branches out, beginning with Henze’s “The Raft of the Medusa” at Tempelhof Airport.
Russian Soprano Anna Netrebko Sings in Berlin, Amid Protests
The Russian star soprano appeared in her first staged opera in Germany since the Ukraine invasion, still under fire for her past support for President...
Review: This London ‘Ring’ Is on the Met Opera’s Radar
It’s not stage-filling spectacle, but Barrie Kosky’s version of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” the start of a four-opera epic, is eerie, vivid and intense.
Salzburg Festival Remains a Crammed Summer Stage
No other festival matches the sheer profusion of classical music, opera and theater offerings at the Salzburg Festival.
At Bayreuth, the Work on Wagner’s Operas Is Never Done
At the festival that Wagner founded, a new “Parsifal” looks different depending on how you see it, and a workshop model refreshes revivals.
Has Scott Joplin’s ‘Thoroughly American’ Opera ‘Treemonisha’ Found Its Moment?
“Treemonisha” — brilliant, flawed and unfinished — is ripe for creative reimagining at a time when opera houses are looking to diversify the canon.
Wagner’s ‘Parsifal’ at the Bayreuth Festival Experiments With AR
Cutting-edge technology has again come to the Bayreuth Festival, where Wagner premiered his final opera with the latest stagecraft in 1882.
‘Henri VIII’ Review: An Operatic Rarity
Saint-Saëns’s 1883 work is seldom performed today, but it is being well staged and excitingly sung at Bard College.
Review: Ted Hearne’s ‘Farming’ Is a Sweet, Sad American Elegy
“Farming,” a choral work that had its New York premiere at Caramoor, is a chaotically ambitious reflection on colonization, consumption and marketing.