Elvis Costello reads—and writes—symphonic scores better than other pop stars; plus an experimental opera starring Thomas Edison’s phonograph.

With Cav/Pag, Glimmerglass makes a mess of one of operaÂ’s great double bills

When Daniel Barenboim isn’t playing fussy, he gets the composer like few other pianists today. Go, Rameau, go! Baroque mania hits Brooklyn.

One longs for a properly impassioned diva in Glimmerglass's "Tosca," but good packaging (and that plotline) carry the opera far.

Roberto Alagna is a forceful tragic hero in the Met’s new Werther, which also nods to another tenor—the late, great, very nervous Franco Corelli.

A new film adaptation of John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer proves (yet again) that the opera should be put out of its misery; Morimur, Bach’s most unlikely hit.

How does the Emerson String Quartet—winner of the Avery Fisher Prize—work so well as a group? By not really functioning as one.

The underappreciated Czech composer Martinu could write opera buffa like a native Italian; the return of Rusalka; an overexcited Yo-Yo Ma.

War and Peace

Offenbach’s Bluebeard gets the silly treatment at Glimmerglass, but listen closely and you’ll hear a wonderful performance.