Metropolitan Opera Preview: Tristan und Isolde

The Met opens its season with Wagner's transcendental tragedy.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Nina Stemme is Isolde in the Met's new production of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2016 The Metropolitan Opera.

It's love and death on the high seas. The 2016 Met season is set to open with this new nautical staging of Tristan und Isolde starring Nina Stemme and Stuart Skelton as Wagner's star-crossed lovers.

Concert Review: Conflagration, Comedy and Crisis

A perfect pair of programs at Mostly Mozart.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Explosante-fixé: Paul Lewis and the parts of a piano.
Photo by Joseph Molina © 2016 harmonia mundi usa.

The Mostly Mozart Festival is celebrating half a century of providing refuge to New Yorkers coping with the city's erratic August temperatures with air-cooled concert halls and skilled performances of classical and early Romantic repertory. Two of those programs were on offer Tuesday night, with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra offering their first symphonic concert at David Geffen Hall this year, and Paul Lewis playing Schubert and Brahms upstairs in the elegant glass confines of the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse.

The Mozart Project

Seven great works from the genius who changed the world.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Somewhere around three-quarters of the way through the ten articles lay month chronicling the life and major stage works of Richard Wagner I started thinking about who I was going to write about next, I thought for maybe ten seconds and decided that the next composer in our spotlight will be Mozart.

Opera Review: Get Out of Jail Free

Bel Canto at Caramoor mounts Beethoven's Fidelio.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Pablo Heras-Casado conducts the Orchestra of St. Luke's
in Fidelio at Caramoor with Paul Groves (center) as Florestan and Elsa van den Heever as Leonore.
Photo by Gabe Palacio © 2016 Caramoor Festival of the Arts.

Since its inception, the Bel Canto at Caramoor program has focused on providing opportunities for young singers and reviving rare operas, usually in Italian but occasionally in French. On Sunday afternoon, with Orchestra of St. Luke's music director Pablo Heras-Casado on the podium in the Venetian Theater, the summer festival offered Fidelio, the only completed opera by Ludwig van Beethoven.