Classical Voice North America

Classical Voice North America serves as the online journal for the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA). It has three main goals: 1) to deliver insightful reviews, commentary, and news from professional music journalists throughout North America, especially in areas where traditional media has reduced or stopped classical music coverage; 2) to highlight national trends through local perspectives, with MCANA members providing reports from their own communities; and 3) to give MCANA members a global digital platform that takes advantage of the growing online, mobile, and multimedia landscape. Unless specified otherwise, all submissions come from MCANA members. Each author is accountable for their content and its accuracy; the opinions shared may not reflect those of the CVNA editorial team or the MCANA board.

Local

English

Blog

Outlet metrics

Domain Authority

Ranking

Global

#1991167

United States

#961700

Arts and Entertainment/Music

#14085

Traffic sources

Monthly visitors

Articles

Salome Painted As Sum Of Her Younger Selves In Met’s Radical Version

2 weeks ago | classicalvoiceamerica.org | David Patrick Stearns

NEW YORK — What drove Salome to such extremes of revenge? Even as a tale from antiquity, the spurned princess who demands the head of St. John the Baptist on a silver tray is puzzlingly horrific. The new Metropolitan Opera production by Claus Guth of Richard Strauss’ opera, Salome, that opened April 29 generated answers in an edge-of-the-seat Dance of the Seven Veils, Salome’s currency to manipulate King Herod.
Young Stars Performing Youthful Compositions Adds Up To Rare Delight

2 weeks ago | classicalvoiceamerica.org | Xenia Hanusiak

ABU DHABI — On paper, the 2025 Abu Dhabi Festival’s chamber music concert “Unique Encounters with Rising Stars” looked precarious. A program that features the nascent works of Schubert, Sibelius, and Glière forecast a light touch. In concert, nothing could have been further from this foreboding expectation.
Motherhood’s Painful Art Splashed On Intimate Canvas Of Chamber

2 weeks ago | classicalvoiceamerica.org | Rick Perdian

PITTSBURGH — Color is at the heart of Jennifer Higdon’s new chamber opera, Woman with Eyes Closed, which premiered at Pittsburgh Opera on April 27. Her scintillating score was inspired by works of art by Lucian Freud, Gauguin, Matisse, Meyer de Hahn, Monet, and Picasso that were stolen from the Kunsthal Rotterdam in 2012 and never recovered. The opera is based on the robbery, but it is not a whodunit.
Seattle Opera’s New General Director Bows With Season To DEI For

3 weeks ago | classicalvoiceamerica.org | Jason Victor Serinus

SEATTLE — A few days before the opening of Seattle Opera’s production of The Magic Flute in February, the company’s new general and artistic director, James Robinson, revealed that when he took over from Christina Scheppelmann in September 2024, he inherited a schedule with only one opera, Carmen, in place for the 2025-26 season. Everything else was selected or finalized after his arrival.
Boston Baroque’s Most Original Instrument, Its Founder, Stepping Down

3 weeks ago | classicalvoiceamerica.org | Keith Powers

BOSTON — Boston Baroque was not always Boston Baroque. Before becoming the country’s first period-instrument orchestra, Boston Baroque was Banchetto Musicale, an ensemble originally comprising all of the early-music instrumentalists — eight — that Martin Pearlman could find in 1973.
Transcending Death Only To Watch Life Fray, All On An Opera Stage

3 weeks ago | classicalvoiceamerica.org | Susan Brodie

NEW YORK — After seven years of development, Experiments in Opera’s world premiere of Aaron Siegel and Mallory Catlett’s Rainbird in the black box theater at Mabou Mines in the East Village on April 16 was worth the wait. The intimate chamber opera built quietly to a searing end, propelled by a stunning text and supported by a spare but thoughtful score. A haunting meditation on death and community, the work delivers a gut punch without raising its voice.
In Met Opera’s Revival, ‘Barbiere’ Emerges Trim And Musically Charged

4 weeks ago | classicalvoiceamerica.org | David Shengold

‘NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Opera production of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia — the seventh re-appearance of Bartlett Sher’s broad, colorful, and mostly successful 2006 staging — returned April 15 and proved a refreshing standout among the house’s revival premieres so far this season. It seemed fully rehearsed, musically cogent, and energized.
For Jerusalem Quartet, Shostakovich Cycle Is Dive Into Elusive Layers

4 weeks ago | classicalvoiceamerica.org | David Patrick Stearns

PERSPECTIVE — Playing all 15 of Dmitri Shostakovich’s string quartets over five concerts is the Jerusalem Quartet’s trademark. This season, the highlight of the ensemble’s national tour is a complete Shostakovich cycle played in chronological order, presented at the Cleveland Museum of Art by the Cleveland Chamber Music Society April 21-30 to conclude its 75th anniversary season. But this will not be the early-middle-late journey typical of Beethoven.
In An Operatic Spectacle Of Courtly Diversions, Biblical Bros Bonding

1 month ago | classicalvoiceamerica.org | Arthur Kaptainis

TORONTO — David and Jonathan: The Biblical Bromance has obvious operatic potential. Marc-Antoine Charpentier thought so in 1688, and while the libretto by the Jesuit preacher François de Paule Bretonneau sometimes adheres a little too obediently to the rhetorical conventions of the era, the five-act work (David et Jonathas in French) still afforded Opera Atelier a handy platform to do the many things this Baroquecompany does well.
Of Bees And Piazzolla: Dances Familiar, Bizarre Animate A Violin Album

1 month ago | classicalvoiceamerica.org | Erica Miner

Kinetic. Michael Jinsoo Lim, violin. Planet M Records (PMB-006). Total time: 68:53. DIGITAL REVIEW — Each of the inventive pieces featured on Kinetic, a new CD of largely 21st-century pieces performed by Pacific Northwest Ballet concertmaster and solo violinist Michael Jinsoo Lim, is connected to dance in delightful ways.