Italy's Arena di Verona Opera Festival will present six classic opera productions, ballet, and multimedia concerts in its 10,000-seat open-air Roman amphitheater, featuring stars including Plácido Domingo, Anna Netrebko, and Roberto Alagna.
Hosted since its founding in the 10,000-seat, open-air Roman amphitheater at the heart of the Italian city of Verona, the Arena di Verona Opera Festival is the largest, oldest, and most international opera festival in the world.
The Arena di Verona Opera Festival, renowned for its historic open-air venue, will present a diverse lineup of opera performances from June to September 2026.
If Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov were a dinner party, Richard Jones’s Russian-language revival at the Royal Opera House would be the dinner date where you arrive bright and curious and leave questioning your life choices, nursing a neat whisky in a corner. This is not an opera that gives up its secrets like a West End musical handing out catchy tunes. It is, in its original 1869 incarnation, seven tableaux of conscience-stripped torment, political intrigue and chorus lines that hammer their point home with power and precision.
The Royal Opera House’s Turandot has now been running so long it feels less like a revival and more like a listed structure. You don’t attend it so much as pass through it, like a familiar corridor or a particularly grand roundabout. With close to 300 performances under its belt and two runs in this calendar year alone, this production has become the most frequently staged opera in Europe, second only to Zeffirelli’s La Bohème at the Met in the global endurance league. If cockroaches ever start staging Puccini after the apocalypse, this is the version they’ll use.
Odyssey Theatre Ensemble will present the American premiere of Bluebeard’s Castle, a dark musical thriller inspired by a medieval French fairy tale. Learn more!
If you come to opera via film musicals and, later, stage shows, Tosca is amongst the most accessible. The story of the lovers and the evil apparatchik is told at a furious pace, trauma after trauma piling up as the emotional heft becomes all but unbearable. There’s no standing about for twenty minutes while someone sings stage left, no mythical dwarves hiding gold, no magical toymaker. Nor, as early critics were quick to point out, is there a whole lot of poetry either in Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa adaptation of Victorien Sardou’s sensational play. However, there are compensations…
The Hungarian State Opera's 2025/26 season will feature 385 performances, world premieres by contemporary Hungarian composers, and works by Beethoven, Mozart, and Wagner, with appearances by Anna Netrebko and Joseph Calleja.
Florida Grand Opera (FGO) has announced the appointment of internationally acclaimed conductor Pablo Mielgo as its new Music Director. Learn more here!
The Czech National Symphony Orchestra takes the Lied Center stage with a breathtaking program including American pianist Maxim Lando and the Nebraska return of superstar violinist Sandy Cameron.
New York City Opera will present Music of Survival: Works by Weinberg, Korngold, and Rovne, with the NYC Opera Orchestra, featuring Constantine Orbelian, Conductor; Kristina Reiko Cooper, Cello; and Elizaveta Ulakhovich, Soprano.
From the National Endowment for the Arts' report on theater resiliency to leadership transitions at LAByrinth Theater Company and Signature Theatre, the industry continues to adapt and thrive. Other stories include financial struggles at Virginia Rep, as well as an update on the ongoing University of the Arts closure.
From U.S. universities grappling with cuts to drama departments, to the financial troubles of regional arts organizations, funding concerns are a recurring theme. Meanwhile, Broadway gears up for a thrilling fall season, and new leadership emerges with Lear deBessonet at Lincoln Center Theater and Bradley Renner at Orlando Ballet.
The board of New York City Opera has announced the appointment of Constantine Orbelian as the organization's new Executive Director & Music Director, succeeding General Director Michael Capasso.
Stories include the opening of nominations for the 2024 BroadwayWorld Regional Awards and the donation from Ken Ludwig to save Hall’s Croft. Financial difficulties are impacting institutions like the University of the Arts and Seattle’s theater scene, prompting a rethinking of models and operations.
This edition of our newsletter brings a focus on leadership transitions and legal battles within the performing arts world. From the San Francisco Ballet facing serious lawsuits that challenge its treatment of dancers, to Anna Netrebko's narrowed but ongoing lawsuit against the Metropolitan Opera, the theme of accountability resonates throughout.
The International Circle of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées has revealed new initiatives to support global performing arts collaborations and cultural exchanges.