The Vargas Blog

When I started going to the opera back when I was a teenager, I heard that Francesco Cilea 's Adriana Lecouvreur was a second rate wo...

The new production of Verdi' s La Traviata at the Metropolitan Opera tries really hard to please New York's Old Guard: the ones ...

Primal elements, fire and water, are the catalysts that erupt into primal desires in Wildlife , Paul Dano 's brilliant directorial deb...

A film about obsession, where one of the main characters follows another in a car through the streets of an exotic city; and where the mai...

Boy Erased is not the first film this year to tackle the thorny subject of conversion therapy. This film, featuring three Hollywood A-list...

Luca Guadagnino , the much-praised director of Call Me By your Name returns to the theme of inter-generational relationships in his rethi...

From London comes last year's West End hit, The Ferryman , Jezz Butterworth 's titanic play about the Troubles in Northern Ireland...

The director of At Eternity's Gate , Julian Schnabel became a sensation during the 1980s with his "plate paintings:" large ...

There’s s great line in Bradley Cooper ’s new film A Star is Born referring to music being just twelve notes, “and the story repeats agai...

We will never know the meaning of everything that's in the new film Roma , Alfonso Cuarón 's loving black-and-white recreation of ...

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs , the latest film from Joel and Ethan Coen , is a rare, strange beast. An anthology film consisting of separa...

This is my second visit to the Metropolitan Opera in one week. My first visit was the MET’s opening night, and now I'm back here on Sat...

The years have not been kind to Roberto Alagna 's voice. As a matter of fact, I worry about his career, I think he is all washed up. T...

Carlos Ramos , the Portuguese tennis umpire, became the man of the hour when he was on the chair for the Serena Williams / Naomi Osaka fi...

This has been a summer where the heat has plagued events that are close and dear to my heart. My trip to the Bayreuth Festival this year ...

An incredible, almost unbelievable real cop story about the infiltration of a backwaters Ku Klux Klan chapter by a rookie black undercover...

Romeo Castellucci is a director of deep, abstract ideas.  His stage productions are abstractions that constantly ask the audience to thin...

The current production of Parsifal , now in its third year, replaced the Stefan Herheim staging I was lucky to see in 2012. That producti...

The new production of Lohengrin , with sets and costumes by husband-and-wife team of Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy promised the first swan knig...

One of the highlights of last year’s trip to Bayreuth was attending Barrie Kosky ’s new production of Die Meistersin...