On Wednesday night, Washington Performing Arts Society opened its fall classical music season with a spectacular concert by the La Scala Philharmonic. Notably it did so not at the Kennedy Center, which has long been the organization’s main venue, but at the newer and growing Music Center at Strathmore. In spite of the suburban location, which doubled this disgruntled city dweller’s car trip, a VIP box at house left held such distinguished guests as First…

The 2006-07 season of the Washington National Opera comes to a close next week, with a concert appearance by several of its singers at the Music Center at Strathmore (May 31, 8 p.m.) and the last performance of its final production, Macbeth (June 2, 7 p.m.). It is time to take stock of the company’s achievements this season and look forward to what it will offer the city next year. Four productions this season were…

At the end of the first installment of Francesca Zambello’s American Ring Cycle, last year’s Das Rheingold premiered at Washington National Opera, the gods went into Valhalla on what looked like the gang plank of a cruise liner, clinking their champagne flutes. Richard Wagner adapted the libretti of his four-opera cycle from German mythology, and Zambello’s idea was to exchange the German myths in the operas for American ones. The gold-hungry Alberich became a…

Richard Strauss’s Salome (1905) helped set the tone for iconoclastic opera in the 20th century. Shattering most of the genre’s conventions — formulaic plots, vocal characterization, propriety — this tale of lust, incest, and decollation may still shock some viewers, but it has become a modern classic. Although Washington National Opera last staged it as recently as 2002, Washington audiences should be pleased to have another chance to hear it, in an excellent concert version…

This week it all really begins. On January 27, 1756 — 250 years ago this Friday — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born. Chances are that, even for those who do not listen regularly to classical music, you know Mozart’s name and could probably hum along with one or more of his pieces. He composed some of the most widely recognized classical music in history. It hardly even seems necessary to observe this bisesquicentennial anniversary, but…

Last night, we heard the National Symphony Orchestra give its first program of 2006, the second in the usual series of three concerts. This concert featured guest conductor James Conlon and three opera singers in the marquee work that really filled the hall, a concert performance of the first act of Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre. As we mentioned in last week’s Classical Music Agenda, Washington is getting ready for a much-anticipated encounter with Wagner’s…

Well, people, you had to get through a few weeks without your DCist Classical Music Agenda, and now the agony is over. Yes, there are once again concerts worth your while in Washington, and we are here to tell you where to go. If you are one of those classical fans who has somehow not heard, this year the world celebrates the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, on January 27. As a result, everyone and…