After three programs to open the season, the Christoph Eschenbach era at the National Symphony Orchestra is off to an excellent start. Like last week's concert and, to a lesser degree the first week before that, in this weekend's concert, heard last night, the NSO players sounded unified, energized, well rehearsed and brimming with confidence. more ›

When the recession forced Washington National Opera to reconfigure its season, the company turned to some tried and true operas. This was somewhat disappointing, as in the revival of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess so quickly after its last appearance, but also made more conventionally minded opera fans happy with the return of some old favorites like Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, which opened on Saturday night at the Kennedy Center Opera House. Premiered in Vienna in 1786, Figaro was the beginning of a legendary collaboration between Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte, who created the libretto from a very current "hit" play by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro, from 1784. The story is, on one hand, quite topical and connected to the issues of its day: the conflicts between the old feudal rights of a decaying nobility and an increasingly resentful oppressed lower class were about to explode in France. On the other, the themes of the opera — jealousy and disappointment in love and marriage, the inequality of the privileged and poor — are as relevant today as they were then, with or without powdered wigs. more ›

renovation, which was concluded this past fall. That dingy old theater, which badly needed a face lift, looks and sounds like a new space, and it was a delight to see it play host to Mark Morris's airy, sunny Mozart Dances on Friday evening. Premiered only in 2006, a commission for Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, this graceful, bouncy choreography appealed on a purely visual level, with movements that corresponded to the Rococo whorls of some of Mozart's most aesthetically pleasing scores. more ›