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LLOYD SCHWARTZ

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BOC's delightful Falstaff and Michael Endres playing Schubert at Newport

The essence of youth
Boston Opera Collaborative is, in its own words, "a non-profit membership organization dedicated to providing opportunities for emerging artists." Its members share in both the artistic and administrative work. Now in its sixth year, it has created a stir.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | July 25, 2011

The BSO opens its summer home without Levine, but with Mark Morris & Yo-Yo Ma

Tanglewood report
It was especially sad that Levine, who cancelled his entire Tanglewood season and then resigned as BSO music director as of September (he just underwent another major surgery on his spine), couldn't lead this particular program.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | August 10, 2011

Three pianists, and some impressive chamber music

Prestidigitation
Three remarkable pianists who couldn't be more different from one another have made some major appearances in the past few weeks.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | June 29, 2011

Steffani's Niobe opens the Boston Early Music Festival; plus, Richard Conrad's farewell

Coming of age
This is the Baroque opera production I've been waiting for.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | June 16, 2011

Boston Baroque's Rameau, Opera Boston's Donizetti, BSO's Berlioz, the Met's new Walküre

Something old, something new
As the season wound down, one of the most applauded concerts was Boston Baroque's semi-staged version of Jean-Philippe Rameau's early 18th-century extravaganza, the "opéra-ballet" Les Indes galantes (roughly, "The Romantic Indies").

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | May 25, 2011

BLO does Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream

plus Dawn Upshaw, Natalia Gutman with the BPO, and Simon Trpceski at the BSO
After last season's The Turn of the Screw, Boston Lyric Opera has returned to Benjamin Britten with A Midsummer Night's Dream, an adaptation of Shakespeare (at the Shubert Theatre through May 10).

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | May 11, 2011

St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Dubravka Tomsic, and Emmanuel's Rake, plus BSO visiting conductors

No substitutions
Three recent musical high points in Boston actually went on as originally announced: no changes, no cancellations, and nothing to do with James Levine, who had his own triumphs out of town, leading Berg's Wozzeck at the Met and a concert with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 26, 2011

Adès, Tetzlaff, and Kissin at the BSO; Matthew Polenzani's Schubert

Tempestuous
After too many weeks of watching the Boston Symphony Orchestra scramble to replace maestro James Levine, both in Boston and on tour, we finally got a concert that went as planned.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 06, 2011

Tod Machover's Death and the Powers, plus Norrington's C.P.E. Bach and the Cantata Singers' B-minor Mass

Robotics
In her director's note for the American premiere of Death and the Powers: The Robots' Opera , Diane Paulus, artistic director of the American Repertory Theater, wrote that this "work of music-theater . . . has brought together artists from the widest range of disciplines — from theater and film to modern dance and the cutting-edge technology of the MIT Media Lab."

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 25, 2011

Bard, Bach, Borromeo: Boston's Spring classical music preview

Three B's and more this spring
The classical-music season continues at full throttle this spring. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Celebrity Series of Boston, and our local companies and schools have some of their most exciting offerings in store. Here are some of the events between March 24 and May 31 I'd be happiest to attend.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 15, 2011

Levine resigns

Poor health forces the BSO’s first American director to give up his position
I’m heartbroken. I’ve just heard that James Levine, after another serious setback to his health, has resigned as the BSO’s music director, a year before his contract was scheduled to expire.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 04, 2011

Heavy metal: Opera Boston’s Cardillac

Plus another Levine cancellation, H&H’s Handel, the Takács Quartet, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky
One of the major musical events of the season, Opera Boston’s New England premiere of Paul Hindemith’s Cardillac, was upstaged by the depressing announcement by BSO managing director Mark Volpe, just before the first of the BSO’s four performances of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, that James Levine was not going to conduct.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 03, 2011

Opera from BLO, the Met, and Teatro Lirico, plus top-level conducting at the BSO

Good works
Opera in Boston is now back in full swing. Boston Lyric Opera, with a company of singers and designers largely new to Boston led by Boston Classical Orchestra music director Steven Lipsitt, gave a memorable production of the opera that composer Viktor Ullmann and poet Petr Kien created in 1943 at the Terezín concentration camp, The Emperor of Atlantis , or Death Quits .

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 15, 2011

Review: Viktor Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis

Boston Lyric Opera pulls out the stops
The Boston Lyric Opera, with Boston Classical Orchestra music director Steven Lipsitt and a company of singers and designers largely new to Boston, has given us a memorable production of the opera that composer Viktor Ullmann and poet Petr Kien created in 1943 at the Terezín concentration camp, The Emperor of Atlantis, or Death Quits .

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 03, 2011

Review: Lorin Maazel with the BSO

Plus, music and images at BCMS, Jeremy Denk, and BSCP's Stravinsky
Lorin Maazel made his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut in 1960, but this busy conductor has returned rarely, once in 1973 and again in 2009 as a substitute for the ailing James Levine in Beethoven's last four symphonies.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 26, 2011

Oedipus schmoedipus

Operas at the BSO, plus the Cantata Singers, the BYSO's Macbeth, and Christine Brewer
One of the Boston Symphony Orchestra's most famous concerts was one that didn't take place. Nearly 30 years ago, the BSO announced Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex , to be staged by Peter Sellars, with Vanessa Redgrave narrating.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 21, 2011

Sing, sing, sing!: The 2011 winter opera forecast

Opera is this winter's warmer
For opera lovers, the offerings last fall were at best a little thin. But this winter, it seems, everyone's doin' it.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 30, 2010

The Top 10 Classical Music Stories of 2010

The good, the not-so-good, and the departed
The good, the not-so-good, and the departed

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 21, 2010

Review: BEMF's Dido and Aeneas

Plus the BSO's Schumann and Harbison, Haochen Zhang, and a Concert for the Cure
Henry Purcell was lucky.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 07, 2010

Birthday boys: Pierre Boulez at Boston Conservatory

Plus the Mimesis Ensemble, the BU Symphony Orchestra, Collage, Garrick Ohlsson, the BSO, BMOP, and the BPO
I think the concert I'll remember most vividly from the past few weeks was the closing night of Boston Conservatory's weekend-long tribute to modern-music icon Pierre Boulez on his 85th birthday.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 01, 2010

Giving thanks: The Cantata Singers' Wyner and Vaughan Williams

Plus Boston Lyric Opera's Tosca
One of the pleasures aroused by the anticipation of a new work by Yehudi Wyner is the certainty that the outcome will arouse even greater pleasure.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | November 09, 2010

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