(Credit: Chris Lee) In 1939, after the Nazi invasion of Poland, a scholar and teacher swam across the River Bug into Ukraine to mail a farewell letter to his three sons, who had emigrated to safety. On the far bank, in Soviet territory, he could have stayed and lived. He swam back instead, to his family and his community in {…}
At 26, Galician soprano Lucía Iglesias is entering a defining period in her young career. A member of the Teatro Real’s Young Artists program, she begins the 2026–27 season with a series of major debuts, including Barbarina in Mozart’s “Le nozze di Figaro” at Teatro Real and Papagena in “Die Zauberflöte” at the Gran Teatre del Liceu. Mozart is at {…}
Spanish tenor Jorge de León is one of the leading Spanish interpreters of the dramatic tenor repertoire, known for his powerful voice and stage presence. Born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and named an Honorary Son of the City of San Cristóbal de La Laguna in 2017, he has performed at major international opera houses in roles including Canio in {…}
(Photo: As the 2026-27 season opens at Madrid’s Teatro de la Zarzuela, baritone César San Martín returns to one of the works most deeply connected to the city’s musical identity: Tomás Bretón’s “La Verbena de la Paloma.” San Martín appears as Julián in Nuria Castejón’s production, which returns to the stage following its 2024 presentation and forms part of a {…}
On Oct. 15, 2026, the Greek National Opera will make its Carnegie Hall debut with a unique program that pays tribute to Nikos Kazantzakis, a Greek writer, journalist, politician, poet and philosopher. Among the vocal soloists on the showcase is Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili, who will also be performing in New York City for the first time in numerous years. {…}
Two chapters of American history, separated by more than a century, sit at the center of this year’s China Now Music Festival in New York. One belongs to the thousands of Chinese laborers who helped build the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s. The other belongs to Maya Lin, the American artist born to Chinese immigrant parents who designed the Vietnam {…}
(Photo: © Victoria Frances Young) Pianist, composer, and electroacoustic and multimedia artist Victoria Frances Young’s contemporary operatic work, “Breaking News,” won the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) Search for New Music Competition’s Leah Reid Electroacoustic and Music in Technology Prize and will receive its wider streaming release on October 6, ahead of the world premiere of its fixed-media {…}
(Photo © Courtesy of the artists & the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music) Two black granite stones, each 246.75 feet long, carve a V-shape into the earth with the names of 58,000-plus dead soldiers in chronological order. Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial is more than meets the eye. In 1981, the 21-year-old Yale student who {…}
(Photo credit: Fotografia Giu) Of the troubadours who sang in medieval Provence, most of the surviving legacy belongs to men. The trobairitz, the female troubadours, have largely faded from cultural memory, and Beatriz de Dia left behind a single song preserved with musical notation. That lone canso is the starting point for “de l’encra escafada” (“from faded ink”), a work {…}