The Vargas Blog

As I listen to Robert Dean Smith and Iréne Theorin (singing beautifully with a cold!) ignite the Bayreuth Festival in Tristan und Isolde ...

As he proved in Brokeback Mountain , Heath Ledger could carry a picture. But in the last stages of his short-lived career, he also proved ...

Historic events have occurred at the Green Hill since the 2007 Bayreuth Festival ended. The old generation is giving way to the new as Wol...

Two amazing things happened at the Park Avenue Armory this evening. The first was that nobody around me walked out of the incredible stagi...

Last week, I attended, as a guest of AMC , the sneak preview of the first episode of the second season of Mad Men , the show that has been h...

You don't have to be Latino to enjoy In the Heights , but it definitely helps. The salsa driven, hip hop-infused musical by Broadway ne...

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull brings back to the summer screens one of the biggest franchises in the history of the mo...

If you follow this link , you will come to a page loaded with recommendations for complete Richard Wagner operas, as well as highlight discs...

Brian Carson , the announcer on my WagnerOperas Podcast was the videographer on this new video that was just put up on YouTube . Enjoy!

Last April, I went to London to see the English National Opera 's production of Satyagraha , the opera about MK Gandhi , by American com...

This week two news items came out of Bayreuth . The first was that after 57 years, Wolfgang Wagner would be leaving the leadership of the ...

This morning The New York Times ran an American Express full page ad officially announcing that last year's West End smash hit Equus ,...

When Janice Baird made her triumphant debut last night as Isolde, stepping in for the ailing Deborah Voigt in this year's troubled rev...

There has not been a performance of this Metropolitan Oper a run of Tristan und Isolde that has played with a complete scheduled cast. Ton...

Now that the news officially appears on her agent's website, perhaps the persistent rumors were really true. Waltraud Meier will sing ...

Johann Sebastian Bach completed and performed The Passion According to St. Matthew, BWV 244 sometime between 1727 and 1729, in the middle ...

Peter Gelb and James Levine can breathe a sigh of relief. After a roller coaster week at The Metropolitan Opera that saw one Tristan get...

This week four notable British men died. Each one a leader in his field. Arthur C. Clarke , whose science fiction novels and non-fiction b...

Random bit of news before my review : I sat down next to the puppet handlers and the fellow who plays Martin Luther King from the upcoming ...

The Metropolitan Opera confirmed that Kansas-born tenor Robert Dean Smith will sing the broadcast and HD telecast of Tristan und Isolde t...