The opera of this year’s Spoleto Festival USA is Vanessa, an existential drama that follows its titular character through a harrowing journey of love, longing and loss. It’s historically important to ...

Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X Nicole Heaston and Zoie Reams in “Vanessa” | Photo by William Struhs, Spoleto Festival USA. With a ...

The introduction of American composer Samuel Barber’s riveting first opera, “Vanessa,” was marked by uncommon splendor: It had its premiere by the venerable Metropolitan Opera in January 1958, won a ...

“Time heals all wounds — and wounds all heels,” as Groucho Marx famously quipped, is a phrase that seems particularly apt with regard to 20th-century American composer Samuel Barber, who lived from ...

Music by Samuel Barber. Libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti. Premiere: January 15, 1958, Metropolitan Opera, New York City. Sung in English. January 16, 1958, the morning after Samuel Barber’s Vanessa ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Here is a question for people who like a cross-cultural quiz. If a lover of the films of Alfred Hitchcock ...

The great mystery surrounding Samuel Barber’s Vanessa is why the opera has never become more of a repertory piece either in its native US or in the UK. Glyndebourne’s magnificent production makes the ...

A beautiful English country house in East Sussex, with an elegant audience enjoying a lavish picnic in glorious sunshine, that is the sumptuous setting of the unique opera festival, Glyndebourne.

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