We're less easily shocked today. But watching Florentine Opera's new production of "Carmen," it's easy to see what startled its Parisian audience when Bizet's opera debuted in 1875. Carmen's brazen ...

Performances in N.Y.C. Advertisement Supported by Critics’ Notebook As the longest-running musical in Broadway history closes, Times critics with a lasting affection for the show take stock of its ...

Fort Worth Opera saved its most dramatic production of the season for last. Kevin Puts’ Silent Night engrossed a large audience in Bass Hall on Sunday afternoon. It received the ultimate compliment: ...

Few do spectacle as well as Cameron Mackintosh. And his rejiggered version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” is as much a spectacle as it was when Mackintosh first produced it nearly ...

Hon Research Fellow in Poetry and Theatre studies, The University of Western Australia As the overture ends, the red curtains at His Majesty’s Theatre rise to reveal a flat, white floor-to-ceiling ...

A massive crystal chandelier descended from the ceiling of the Orpheum Theatre’s house as its lights flickered and the classic “The Phantom of the Opera” theme boomed throughout the theater. Curtains ...

Puccini’s Turandot, with its combination of myth, ritual and emotional extremity, suits dark evenings and the build-up to Christmas, when audiences seem especially ready for spectacle and intensity.