Composer Gregory Spears is in the middle of celebrating his breakthrough opera “Fellow Travelers,” which premiered 10 years ago. The opera, which is based on the Thomas Mallon novel set in Washington D.C., during the McCarthy era of the 1950s and focuses on the “lavender scare,” a witch hunt and mass firings of gay people from the United States government, {…}
The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale recently announced its 2026-27 season, the first with Peter Whelan as its new Music Director. For Whelan, what distinguishes Philharmonia Baroque from the outset is its energy. He describes the ensemble as a group of “musical time-travelers” who bring a visceral, theatrical charge to every performance, and speaks warmly of the Bay Area audience’s {…}
Bulgarian tenor Alexander Marev is one of the rising stars of the opera world who has won numerous national singing competitions in his native Poland. He has also been a young talent program of the Opera La Monnaie/De Munt in Brussels and made his stage debut in March 2022 in a production of “Rigoletto.” Since then he has appeared at {…}
(Credit: Katharina Gebauer) Anna Skryleva is an award winning conductor, composer, pianist, and synesthete. She regularly appears as a guest conductor at prestigious opera houses including the Hamburg State Opera, the Royal Swedish Opera, the Dallas Opera, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and this season she made her Teatro alla Scala debut. She is also making {…}
(Photo: Arno Kohlem) Christoph von Bernuth is the Opera Director and Artistic Director of the International Handel Festival at Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe. With nearly 19 years at the Innsbruck Early Music Festival alongside René Jacobs, he is a leading expert in Baroque opera productions. Formerly Deputy General Director at Oldenburg, he is also an accomplished director, known for staging works {…}
Joshua Conyers is recognized as one of the leading dramatic baritones of today. Described by the New York Times as having a “sonorous baritone that wheedled and seduced” and by the Washington Post as having a “show stealing performance;” his is a remarkable story that starts in abject poverty, from the shelters, drug abuse, and violence of his childhood home {…}
(Photo: Welmer Keesmaat) Director Jorinde Keesmaat is working on the concept and staging of a new project, “SHE/HER/ME,” an opera film installation with film and dialogue by Jean Cocteau, music by Philip Glass, and new composition by Molly Joyce. Keesmaat was invited as the keynote speaker to a Women’s Leadership event, ahead of International Women’s Day, to the Consulate General {…}
(Photo: Tomas Kullström) Swedish mezzo-soprano Alexandra Olsson Andersen’s work spans opera, concert, theater, and film, with a growing reputation for physically demanding roles and a strong presence in the trouser repertoire. She studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, the Norwegian National Academy of Opera in Oslo, and the Manhattan School of Music in New York, where she {…}
Opera history is full of lost works. It is also missing champions with the interest and desire to find the missing pieces and give these operas a second life. That’s not the case with Lawrence H. Levens, custodian and guardian of the Barnes/Dixon/Myers Historical Harlem Papers, who has worked tirelessly to restore a work by Will H. Dixon, a pioneering African-American {…}