NEW YORK — Conrad Tao tends to slip into celestial metaphors. During a recent interview, this musician — a veteran at just 25 — referred to his ideas about concert programming as “constellatory.” When he thought he was rambling, he cut himself off and apologized for “galaxy-braining.”
NEW YORK — Everything about Philip Glass’ music seems to exist in extremes. As a listener, you either love it or you don’t. As a performer, you’re either flawless or a failure. Concerts can be transporting, near-religious experiences — or just an endless slog.
NEW YORK — The soprano Barbara Hannigan has given nearly 100 premieres, the majority of which were written specifically for her. She is also a master of some of the most challenging music in the repertory: Berg’s “Lulu,” Webern, Ligeti. So if she’s stumped by a new work, chances are it’s unsingable — or perhaps a masterpiece in the making.
NEW YORK — Programming matters: What an orchestra plays can be just as important as the quality of the playing. It can even be the difference between a concert that feels endless, and one you don’t want to ever end.
The most breathtaking subway exit in the world may be the one at Place de l’Opéra in Paris. Its final steps lead to a postcard-ready view of the sensational Palais Garnier, the love-it-or-hate-it theater with a baroque, Renaissance and all-around garish pastiche that overwhelms and enchants at every turn.
BAYREUTH, Germany — The Wartburg castle, so central to Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” that it’s part of the opera’s full title, makes an appearance only briefly in Tobias Kratzer’s new production, which opened the Bayreuth Festival here Thursday. At the beginning of the overture, a video projected onstage shows the medieval fortress in sweeping drone footage fit for a tourism commercial. Then it’s gone.
(Critic’s Pick): VENICE — When “Sun & Sea (Marina)” won this year’s Golden Lion, the top prize of the Venice Biennale, it was measured against works of predominantly visual art.
It certainly is difficult: As the bodies pile up — death by uninhibited pleasure, or by the simple inability to pay a bar tab — sympathy is hard to come by. So are happy endings.
AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France — The first thing we hear in Christophe Honoré’s new production of “Tosca” at the Aix Festival here is not the score’s thunderous opening chords, but “Vissi d’arte,” a rending aria from Act II about the life of a diva: “I lived for art, I lived for love.”
NEW YORK — My favorite scene in the recent documentary “Maria by Callas” is when, after a seven-year absence, the world’s most famous diva returns to the Metropolitan Opera in 1965. A TV journalist visits the theater to interview young men who have been waiting hours — overnight, even — for tickets. And while none of them are explicitly gay, it’s no secret that they are.
Her friends and colleagues, however, are used to the laughter. It is, they’ll tell you, as central to her artistry as her superb technique and the sensitivity of her touch.
(Critic’s Notebook): NEW YORK — When the Metropolitan Opera began to roll out Robert Lepage’s production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, in 2010, I was a student who spent most of my time at the Met in the Family Circle — the uppermost, least expensive seats.
BOSTON — When Margaret Atwood began her novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” with the line “We slept in what once been the gymnasium,” she may well have been referring to the Lavietes Pavilion here.
