Yesterday, it was announced that James Levine, music director of both the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, had to withdraw from several performances because of sudden unexpected back surgery.

Today two more substitutes were named. Edo de Waart, a…

James Levine

Indefatigable conductor James Levine, music director of both the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has withdrawn from several performances with both institutions due to what the the BSO’s press release called “immediate unanticipated back surgery for a…

Behrens as Brunnhilde

Soprano Hildegard Behrens, one of the finest dramatic sopranos of her generation, has died at 72 in Tokyo, the result of an apparent aneurysm.

Behrens (February 9, 1937 – August 18, 2009) was a remarkable performer, with an amazing…

Although some of the news from the Metropolitan Opera has been on the grim side this year — for example, next season’s anticipated-but-expensive revival of John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles was canceled in favor of a safer, cheaper bet —…

NEW YORK – I planned my trip to New York around the happy confluence of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s annual concerts at Carnegie Hall on Friday and Saturday evenings, and soprano Christine Brewer’s scheduled Bruennhilde in “Die Walkuere” at…

NEW YORK - There is a popular misconception that opera always involves heavy-duty stories and emotions, that it’s always serious, that someone — or several someones — must always perish by the end.

Not so.

As Exhibit A, consider Donizetti’s sweet, tuneful,…

St. Louis-based soprano Christine Brewer has suffered severe damage to her right knee, and has withdrawn from the Metropolitan Opera’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen.” Brewer was to have sung the crucial role of the Valkyrie Brünnhilde in two complete cycles,…

The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Gaetano Donizetti’s bel canto classic Lucia di Lammermoor, seen in high-definition broadcast at the St. Louis Art Museum on Saturday afternoon, offered a made-for-HD quartet of lead singers, a handsome, mostly well-thought-out production, and an…

Soprano Christine Brewer is the St. Louis area’s own classical music superstar, a warm and funny woman who still lives in a little house in Lebanon, Illinois, a few blocks from her alma mater, McKendree University.

At 4 p.m. on Tuesday,…

If you should someday find yourself running an opera company, keep this in mind: Don’t ever put a choreographer in charge of an entire production, unless dance is really all you care about. (And in that case, you should be…