Collected articles

For a comprehensive collection of my work, without paywalls and including a number of my pieces from the Wall Street Journal, visit my page at Authory.com. Below, by contrast, is a curated and sometimes changing group of highlights. Articles are from The Washington Post unless otherwise specified. 

Noseda, NSO and strong cast deliver the grandeur of Verdi's "Otello." I'm not going to make a habit of writing performance reviews, but I was grateful to the Washington Classical Review for giving me the chance to write this one. 6/2024

Fleeing the Gilded Cage. In my first feature for the National Public Radio website, I look at opera singers who, contrary to expectation and after their initial panic, found the pandemic shutdown gave them time and space to spread their creative wings in new ways. NPR, 12/2021

Furloughed musicians and a new digital frontier: Performing arts in the Covid-19 shutdown. Vanity Fair, 4/2020

(Paywall may apply.)

It's my last night as the Post's classical music critic. Here are my parting thoughts on the NSO. 11/2019

What does a conductor do, anyway? A music critic lays it out: 10/2019

A beginner's guide to enjoying classical music: no snobs allowed. 10/2018

Classical musicians reveal a profession rife with harassment (with Peggy McGlone): 7/2018

The top 35 female composers in classical music. 8/2017

There's still high culture in America: why the NSO went to Moscow: 3/2017

Pianos: beyond the Steinway monoculture: 9/2015

Kissin plays forgotten composers, declaims poetry in stunning performance: 2/2014

Lang Lang's unique style, good and bad, offers originality. 11/2012
Katie's Theme: The Los Angeles Times, 9/2006

The trouble with opera. 2/2018

New opera wants the same appeal as television. If only it could be as smart. 7/2017 

At an opera festival, tales of drug cartels. At opera houses, same old song. 1.2016

The rarity of black faces, not 'Otello' in blackface, should be issue in opera. 10/2015

On spinning in opera, and going through the motions. 3/2015

Tenor Ian Bostridge performs 'Winterreise." 2/2015

Is anybody listening? American opera faces crossroads as audiences slide. 6/2010

Go to that opera again: singers are only human. The New York Times, 12/2006

The end of the great big American voice. The New York Times, 11/2005

Twilight of the French aristocracy, and of a reigning tenor. The New York Times, 10/2002

Neglected visionary Agnes Denes altered our landscape with her art. At 88, she's finally getting her due. 10/2019

Ragnar Kjartansson's exuberant work at the Hirshhorn. 10/2016

Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series, reunited. 10/2016

Roy Lichtenstein: a retrospective at the National Gallery. 10/2012

Separating the dissident from the artist: Ai Weiwei. 10/2012

You can't hold it, but you can own it: Tino Sehgal. The New York Times, 11/2007

William Kentridge's video artistry, forged first in charcoal. The New York Times, 4/2007

Reading documenta x. The Wall Street Journal, 7/1997

Women give voice to a male canon. It happens to be Ancient Greek. 7/2019 

'Hamilton' is opera for our time. 7/2018 

I took my child to "The Sound of Music." What I learned was all about myself. 7/2017

Streep sings Sondheim, and finds her voice. 12/2014 

A cultural critic's restless last night. The New York Times, 11/2007

Responding to crisis, art must look beyond it. The New York Times, 3/2002

Twyla Tharp, with an eye on her legacy. The Los Angeles Times, 6/2001

Germany's classic of classics, all 21 hours. The New York Times, 8/2000 

Philip Glass. The Washington Post, 11/2018
Martha Argerich. The Washington Post, 12/2016
Tzimon Barto. The Washington Post, 2/2011
Angela Gheorghiu. The New York Times, 12/2005
Mirella Freni. The New York Times, 9/2002
Luciano Pavarotti. Opera News, 11/1998
Ewa Podles. The New York Times, 10/1998

He was an angry, troubled child. Then he discovered opera. 9/2016
The worst of Bach. 8/2016
In search of the Mozart effect. 8/2016
Julian Barnes takes on music, timidly. 5/2016

I know the sad kid at the zoo, 11/2013
The real Philomena Lee finds Hollywood ending to adoption story, 2/2014
Jonathan Williams, RIP, originally published 3/2008

A Critical Difference, originally published by Andante.com in 2002, reprinted in Perfect Sound Forever

Aliens Abduct City's Identity, The Wall Street Journal, 9/1997

World Book Fair Spotlights Nationalism. The Wall Street Journal, 10/1993

For articles about the fall of the Berlin Wall, Jewish life in 1990s Germany, and other topics, click here. 

All my life, I hated running. In my  50s, I set out to change that. The Washington Post, 3/2019
Secrets of a reluctant runner. Five-minute success: the podcast. 6/2020