"His letters show how he savvily wrote with an eye toward the market, hoping to delight listeners at every level of society. And pleasure was political in an age when some of the boldest advocates for free speech and personal choice were libertines." - MSN (The Atlantic)
She’s an advocate, a style icon, a marketing wiz, a prolific songwriter, a pusher of visual boundaries and a record-breaking road warrior. And she sells a ton of albums. - Billboard
Concerts in early March in Los Angeles, Orange County, Santa Barbara, and Palm Desert were found "no longer financially viable" due to "significant increases in cargo and travel costs." April concerts in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Ann Arbor are unaffected. - MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Maria Schneider says that "the pressures in your life, good and bad, just affect music so much. ... When you look back, it's almost like a diving rod, it's telling me more about my life than I knew at the time." - Slate
"Before the curtain, an announcement: 'In the event of an air raid or siren, we ask you to adjourn to the shelter. If the air raid warning lasts less than an hour, the performance will resume.'" - The Observer (UK)
The floating psychedelic flowers of this season's Parsifal "are meant to provide the audience with 'sacred visions' of 'a world where wonder still exists,'" says director Jay Scheib. But this production also reveals a massive rift in leadership at the festival. - The New York Times
That's Samuel Mariño's goal, anyway. "I really love this music," says the 29-year-old soprano, who's appearing at Glyndebourne in Handel's Semele, "and I think if we want to keep this music alive, we have to make bridges." - BBC
Had Bennett listened to "outside noise instead of his gut, he would’ve missed out on his greatest hits, an enormous second life in his career, and a veritable collection of prolific collaborations." - Vulture
The members are asking for their salaries to return to pre-COVID level. According to reports, the Royal Opera House orchestra was asked to make a number of concessions during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to keep the company afloat whilst live performances were halted for public health reasons. - OperaWire
"So" — who begins his term in the fall of 2024 — "isn't a stranger to New Haven. Born and raised in Hong Kong, he attended Yale as an undergraduate, where he studied literature, founded an orchestra and conducted the undergraduate opera company." - New Haven Independent
"It is the embodiment of a set of feelings about the world that are so richly specified in each case as to amount to something like a set of proposals about what a body can be, about how it can move and how or why it might seek expression.” - The Atlantic
Hong Kong officials seem to fear it can, as they are seeking an injunction against a protest anthem called “Glory to Hong Kong.” Officials have asked a court to ban the song from being performed, broadcast, distributed, displayed, sold, printed or published by any means and on any platform. - Washington Post
"Dan Harden's proposal, called the Ravenchord, is shaped like a bird's wing, with strings fanning out from the center. In concert, a pianist would sit in front of the piano facing the audience; viewers would get to see the inner workings of the instrument as the pianist plays." - Fast Company
Pantos joined the summer opera festival as president in February of 2022 — with longtime company chief Pelham Pearce remaining as artistic director. But Pearce resigned abruptly as last summer's season began, and late last year a bitter dispute broke out between management and the musicians' union AGMA. - The Colorado Sun
