Fred Plotkin

As 2015 comes to a close, Operavore blogger Fred Plotkin comes to the realization that, in the United States, it was a really good year for new opera.

The central mission of the Wexford festival since its 1951 founding, writes Operavore's Fred Plotkin, has been to unearth works that have not been heard since their creation.

Inspired by a casting call controversy at the Knoxville Opera, Fred Plotkin looks at the role visuals play in how we listen.

Blogger Fred Plotkin shares his thoughts on France, its music and the philosophy of Paris that inspires the world over.

Operavore blogger Fred Plotkin discusses the new play "Dear Elizabeth," about love letters between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell and makes a proposal.

Operavore blogger Fred Plotkin writes about the 2015 Metropolitan Opera Guild's annual luncheon honoring artists that made their debut at the Met in 1965.

From Verdi to Wagner to Prokofiev, opera and musical presentations involving war are abundant writes Operavore blogger Fred Plotkin.

Operavore blogger Fred Plotkin remembers the longest-serving employee in the history of the Met, tympanist Richard Horowitz. 

Fresh from a trip to Ireland's Wexford Festival Opera, Blogger Fred Plotkin writes about the influence of dreams in opera.

Operavove blogger Fred Plotkin writes about Baroness Mariuccia Zerilli-Marimò, the founder of the Casa Italiana, who died suddenly on October 17 at the age of 89.

Opera Philadelphia on Tuesday announced what it calls a 12-day urban opera festival. But it's not the first company to shake up its season routine, as Fred Plotkin writes.

"What Bach is to music, Giotto is to Renaissance art and all that followed," writes Fred Plotkin in this appreciation of his dramatic paintings.

You can go to quite a few operas in which a wedding takes place but last week, Fred Plotkin had a new experience.

Fred Plotkin looks at how you can study Italian by attending the opera. There are no fewer than 19 such opportunities at the Met this season.

Healthy voices are a boon to opera fans, writes Fred Plotkin. He cites three star sopranos who are singing roles that Met audiences have not heard them in.

A change of scenery can do a lot for a composer's musical perspective, Esa-Pekka Salonen tells Operavore's Fred Plotkin.

Sunday matinees, if marketed and priced intelligently, might lure back some of the suburban and outer-borough audiences that the Met Opera has lost, writes Fred Plotkin.

"I am asked, even more than usual, the exhaustingly trite question of whether opera is still 'relevant,'" writes Fred Plotkin. You might be surprised at his response.

For even established opera singers, church and synagogue gigs are a necessary means of paying the rent, writes Fred Plotkin. But does it help to subscribe to a given faith?

As Queen Elizabeth became the longest-serving monarch in British history Wednesday, British opera lovers were looking to the season ahead. Fred Plotkin reports from London.