New in VAN
Interview
Built on Sand
Dame Sarah Connolly prepares to star in the Saudi opera “Zarqa Al Yamama”
New in VAN
Opinion
John McWhorter Has Nothing to Say (And He’s Saying It)
What the NYT writer gets fundamentally wrong—and accidentally right—about “4’33””
New in VAN
Interview
The Opposite of Generic
Anthony Freud retires as general director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago
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Music as protest
“We Disrupt What We Love”
An interview with John Mark Rozendaal, a musician and Extinction Rebellion activist who disrupted the Met’s “Tannhäuser”
Messing with the Fantasy
An interview with cellist Ethan Philbrick, who played at last week’s Shut It Down for Palestine demonstration at David Geffen Hall
The Production of Light
Russian pianist Polina Osetinskaya on music and resistance under Putin’s regime
“I didn’t start out thinking, ‘Now I want to deal with bodily fluids.’”
Steven Takasugi
Cage match
Of donors and governments
Exotic Educational Experiences
Why the San Francisco Conservatory of Music has gone on a buying spree
Level Out, Level Down
If Arts Council England wants to bring classical music outside London, why is it cutting funding to the groups that are already there?
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Most Read
“All They Have is Their Culture”
Composer and journalist Jüri Reinvere on music and politics between Estonia and Russia
An Actually Erotic Classical Music for Sex Playlist
Quiverings, tappings, and indecorous counterpoint
New in VAN
Composers, Canonized
Whose purpose does it serve when we treat great musicians of the past like saints?
The Best Opera Scenes in Film
How movie directors use the form to deepen world and character
In Defense
Stas Nevmerzhytskyi, the editor of Ukrainian classical music magazine The Claquers, goes to war
“When I Came Out All of This Tension Went Away”
How bass-baritone Sam Taskinen found her voice