Today, your highly personal, delightfully specific bests of 2025.
Tag: Classical Music
4 Arrested Over Disruption of Israeli Orchestra’s Concert
Several audience members shouted or lit flares as the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra performed in Paris. After the concert, the ensemble received 10 minutes of applause and played the Israeli national anthem.
La Scala Stages New Vision of Shostakovich’s Original ‘Lady MacBeth’
Banned for decades in the Soviet Union for its dissonance and bawdiness, the opera returns as La Scala’s season opener amid the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death.
La Scala’s First ‘Ring’ in a Decade Passes the Wagnerian Flame
Two conductors — a mentor and a protégé, both trained as pianists — bring precision and lyricism to the first new staging of Wagner’s epic in a decade.
Changing Tunes
The artists we love are always changing. But there’s part of all of us that’s impervious to external forces.
‘Nutcracker’ Is a Casualty of a ‘Quarantine’ of Russian Culture in Lithuania
Lithuania’s national opera house had stopped showing Tchaikovsky’s 1892 masterpiece in solidarity with Ukraine over the war with Russia. Then a new minister expressed fondness for the Russian composer, igniting a furor.
To Join This Club, a Member Must Die. And You Must Adore Verdi.
Based in Parma, Club dei 27 is so exclusive that it’s given rise to all sorts of myths. But it’s really about venerating the famous opera composer born near the Italian city.
A ‘Simpsons’ Joke Comes True for Cypress Hill
The famed California hip-hop group played with the London Symphony Orchestra — 28 years after “The Simpsons” dreamed up the collaboration.
Italy Celebrates Opera, a National Passion in ‘the Depths of the Soul’
A star-studded concert pulled out all the stops to celebrate one of the country’s most important art forms.
A Night to Remember at the Opera, Complete With a Phantom
About 130 children took part in a sleepover at Rome’s opera house, part of a campaign to make up for a lack of music education by making the theater and the art form more familiar and accessible.