Daniel Catán's ultra-romantic Florencia en el Amazonas (1996, in its Houston Grand Opera world premiere) is not a great opera, but it is a good one. There's wondrous beauty threaded throughout the orchestration; the swirling melodies recall anothe...

Of all the world premieres produced by Theatre Under the Stars over its 50-years run, only Beauty and the Beast remains the golden goose. I don't think Chaplin, Phantom, Sir Jack!, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, or Zorro, the Musical have added...

Hansel and Gretel German composer Engelbert Humperdinck was Richard Wagner's protege. He helped stage the premiere of Parsifal at Bayreuth, the theater Wagner built for himself, and even wrote some connecting music for the “Transformation Scene,” ...

I've been Scrooged! A lot. Dickens' miserly oyster prowls center stage, as usual, this Bayou Christmas season. He, along with fellow traveler The Nutcracker, are theater cash cows, invoking cheer and good will as well as a much needed boost to a c...

Agrippina, where have you been all my life? And Ars Lyrica? I think I love you. Ars Lyrica, Houston's preeminent early music ensemble, under the sparkling direction of Matthew Dirst, has staged an utterly magnificent production of George Frideric ...

Viennese court composer Antonio Salieri was never Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's scheming nemesis (sorry, Peter Shaffer with your delightfully wicked Amadeus) so much as he was Mozart's unwitting irritant. He certainly never tried very hard to help out...