We honor Agnes Moorehead annually with awards in her name for the best live performances of the year because there was no actress more versatile than she. Recent viewings of two of her films confirmed this for me once again — unnecessary as that was. Comments (1)

It’s so nice — and so rare — when much-touted cultural events live up to their hype! This happened November 23 at what I intend to continue calling the New York State Theater, where I delightedly watched one of the pinnacle events of Lincoln Center& Comment

Britney Spears has said of her new album “Britney Jean,” “It is my most personal record yet. I poured my heart and soul into this album.” As deep confessionals go, this album barely scratches the surface. If anyone is expecting Britney to bare the dark inner recesses of her soul — not here. If, instead, you are looking for a fun pop dance record, then this collection delivers. Comments (1)

Audiences faced this October and November, two of the busiest months on the opera and vocal calendar, with City Opera sadly a thing of the past and Opera Orchestra of New York still silent about the current season Comment

There was a time when the big three were Whitney, Celine, and Mariah. Prior to the days of Rihanna, Miley, and auto-tune, these big-voiced divas owned the charts at a time when radio had room for big voices. Comment

October 24 proved a happy night at the Metropolitan Opera: a performance of Bellini’s mighty “Norma” in which all four leads belonged on the great stage. Ho Comment

Artpop” from Lady Gaga is an ambitious, sprawling mess of an album. This follow-up to 2011’s “Born this Way” is huge –– from bombastic club tracks to overpowering vocals –– and it harkens back to the days of the concept album. The concept here being Lady Gaga herself. Her fame, her sexuality, and her ego. Comments (1)

I come late to the party in discussing Nico Muhly’s “Two Boys,” which just finished a run of seven Met performances –– indifferently received and poorly attended –– that marked the two-act work’s US premiere. The talented Muhly’s first opera, “Two Comment

We all know about Broadway triple threats, but the glorious musical veteran Lee Roy Reams is a quadruple — not only does he sing, dance, and act, he also happens to be maybe the greatest theatrical raconteur ever. Having adored him onstage for his talent and off for his effervescent, ever-friendly vibe, I knew he would be one hell of an interview Comments (2)

Washington National Opera’s season started impressively with an uncomplicated but visually pleasing “Tristan und Isolde” staging imported from Sydney. Brian Thomson’s clever unit set presented a liminal, bridge-like space evo Comment

In 2004, the world lost a cherished musical theater icon with the passing of lyricist Fred Comments (2)

Since 2003, the Queer Zagreb Festival has advocated and promoted queer life and culture in that Croatian city with audacity. It has become a major art festival in Europe, all the while challenging and expanding the parameters of queer artistry. Comment

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French director Claire Denis has a new film, “Bastards,” which screened at the New York Film Festival, and I jumped at the chance to interview this provocative, ever-surprising auteur, whose previous work includes the highly lauded “I Can’t Sleep,” “White Material,” and “Friday Night.” “Bastards” is a dark-toned policier, featuring Vincent Lindon and Chiara Mastroianni, about a murkily po Comment

Creating almost always involves looking forward. Looking back is a burden.” Comment

She is perhaps not so well known today, but in her time and for a matter of decades Gloria Swanson (1899-1983) had a real claim to being the “greatest movie star of them all.” Of course, she was actually called that when she played Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard,” the immortally defining summit of her career. Although she will be eternally identified as that maniacally leering, close-up-ready old broad slinking down a staircase, Comment

At the opening of the Metropolitan Opera season, political drama attempted to upstage music drama. LGBT activists petitioned Peter Gelb and the Met to dedicate the September 23 gala opening night of gay composer Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” –– starring two Putin supporters, soprano Anna Netrebko and conductor Valery Gergiev –& Comments (2)

Bard Summerscape presented the US staged premiere of Sergey Taneyev’s “Oresteia” (composed 1887-1894, premiered 1895) as part of its “Stravinsky and his World” program. Taneyev (1856-1915) was a piano prodi Comments (3)

Dušan Týnek is a young Czech-born choreographer whose eponymous Dance Theater, founded in 2003, has attracted goodly attention. In his three-dance evening at BAM Fisher (September 4-7), Comments (1)

"Der fliegende Höllander” was the Glimmerglass Festival’s first canonical Wagner (his early “Das Liebesverbot” was presented in 2008). August 16’s musical performance u Comments (1)

Bette Davis — often called the greatest of film actresses (most serious rival: Katharine Hepburn) — drives me crazy. It is true that she could be brilliant (“Of Human Bondage,” “Dangerous,” “Marked Woman,̶ Comments (2)

Up in Ulster County, Phoenicia’s four-day International Festival of the Voice — founded in 2010 by bass-baritone Louis Otey, mezzo Maria Todaro, and baritone Kerry Henderson — takes a broad, holistic view of Comment

In the 19th century, every Italian composer wanted to write a grand opera for the Paris Opéra. A triumph in cosmopolitan Paris meant fame on an international scale. Giuseppe Verdi cautiously took up the challenge, adapting his early “I Lom Comments (3)

Randy Harrison is forever burned into the consciousness of a gay generation for playing Justin Taylor, the ultimate irresistibly innocent twink on the groundbreaking TV series “Queer as Folk.” Since that show wrapped in 2005, he Comments (8)

Happy Supreme Court news mightily energized San Francisco Pride, already glowing from Frameline’s Film Festival and Shangri-La weather. All that and opera, too! Comment

The Fresh Fruit Festival, now in its 11th year celebrating LGBTQ arts and culture, was born out of the collaboration of All Out Arts, a non-profit founded in 1991 Comment

From the start we’ve all been very clear that this is not about Oscar as a gay martyr. It’s about Oscar being a great man — honest and bra Comment

The HOT! Festival is Dixon Place’s 22nd annual celebration of queer culture in New York City. Dixon Place’s mainstage and cocktail lounge — at 161A Chrystie Street, between Rivington and Delancey Streets on the Lower East Side Comments (2)

Last year, tap dancer Savion Glover received a Bessie Award –– the dance and performance equivalent of a Tony or an Oscar –– for music composition. He defines himself as a hoofer, and his preoccupation is with the sounds he’s making. That’s how devoted he is to the acoustic aspect of his tapping. In the past, in fact, he’d often tu Comment

On June 17, a beautiful early summer evening, Neal Goren and the Gotham Chamber Opera presented the New York professional sta Comment

Beautiful, historic Charleston, South Carolina, has hosted the Spoleto Festival USA since 1977. Classical and jazz concerts compete with dance and theater events in all styles, and in recent years two opera productions in different venues have become sta Comments (1)

Yanira Castro’s dance-making enterprise, a canary torsi, creates site-adaptable, installation-based performance projects. Her work invites audiences to participate in live performances that extend into other media platforms. Ranging from formal movement and immersive audio installations to fictional Twitter feeds and interactive websites, Castro’s dances explore the relationship between spectator Comments (2)

Can you imagine following in your mother’s footsteps as a singer when that mother happens to be Diana Ross? Well, her daughter, Rhonda, is doing just that and making quite a swell name for herself with a lovely voice that truly swings (there’s a hint of her Mom’s famed huskiness), some serious songwriting chops, a CD “Rhonda Ros Comments (5)

May 6 saw the last performance — for the season, some rumors said the last ever — of the Met’s Machine-dominated “Die Walküre.” The Robert Lepage production’s first act seemed less wrong-headed an Comment

Five years ago, husband and wife Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs packed their bags and moved to Minneapolis, and they haven’t been seen round these parts since. Now, thanks to the efforts of curator Nicky Paraiso at La MaMa, the two McKnight Fellows bring their unique brand of lovable, mad, Beckettian dancey-dan Comment

With a Wilde-themed “ Comment

The Metropolitan Opera presented its first ever Handel opera, “Rinaldo,” in 1983. Five years later, it got around to his most popular opera, “Giulio Cesare,” in a John Copley production that originated at the English National Opera. This April, the Met unveiled its second product Comment

I have been enslaved by the comic talent of Christine Baranski ever since seeing her in John Guare’s brilliant classic R Comment

Richard Wagner's bicentennial, celebrated by the Met with Francois Girard's splendid new “Parsifal” and Robert Lepage's misconceived “Ring” — an achievement as empty as Otto Schenk's kitschy realism, and less popular — also spurred ambitions elsewhere. Comment

Like the annual migration of the monarch butterflies or the gray whales, the similarly spectacular and mighty Stephen Petronio Company returns to the Joyce T Comment

Giuseppe Verdi’s bicentennial is coming up in October 2013 but opera houses in New York and worldwide have been celebrating early. Sarasota Opera’s Winter Festival is close to co Comment

On the first of three different programs in its two-week season at the Joyce Theater, Ballet Hispanico danced three works by Spanish dance makers –– a 1983 work by Nacho Du Comments (2)

The premise that Arthur Mitchell –– the first African-American dancer in George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet Company –– strove to establish was that black dancers can do classical ballet as well as white ones. He founded a ballet school in Harlem and shortly thereafter a company, Dance Theatre of Harlem, to prove it. Comment

Max Steele is a writer, blogger, singer/ songwriter, bandleader, performance artist, ersatz go-go boy, and self-affirmed figure of the New Gay Underground — a kind of folksy Comments (39)

"I’m 80 years old and loving every moment of it!” cried Liliane Montevecchi to me in her exquisite leopard skin-lined jewel box of a Sutton Place apartment. “You know, sometimes people say, ‘You cannot tell Comment

Washington National Opera revived “Manon Lescaut” for what proved a very strong role debut by Patricia Racette. Heard March 17, the out soprano, looking lovely and youthful (if not teenag Comment

In its two week Joyce Theater season, through April 7, the Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Company marks its 30th year with two programs that include works from 1977 to the present. Comment

One remarkable thing about the Dansk Danse Teater (Danish Dance Theatre), directed since 2001 by British-born Tim Rushton, is that only one of the troupe’s dozen dancers is actually Danish — and she’s of African descent. Denmark’s most widely acclaimed contemporary dance Comment

New York City Opera’s recent winter season at BAM showed a company rising like a phoenix from its own ashes. While its old productions were broken up and auctioned off as souvenirs, George SteelR Comments (1)

Helen Reddy was undoubtedly one of the major voices of the 1970s, with her rapid-succession top-selling hits constantly playing on the radio and seeping under our skin. She’s making a long overdue return to New York at B.B. King on March 23 and 24 and took time off from touring Comments (1)

Paul Taylor’s second spring season at Lincoln Center offers the usual abundance of dances by the 20th century master. Having moved from its former stage, City Center, to the grander Koch Theater, the company looks entirely at home. Taylor is perhaps the last remaining mid-c Comment

The last time proudly out soprano Christine Brandes spoke to Gay City News was in April 2004. Bay Area critic Jason Victor Serinus profiled the dynamic, bright, quirky, and dark-silver-voiced Brandes as she readied her favorite role — Susanna in Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro&# Comment

At an early rehearsal for the new Encores! production of “It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane… It’s Superman,” composer Charles Strouse had a huge smile on his face listening to his rarely revived score. Afterwards, he enthused to the leading man, “What a wonderful voice! Where have you been?” Comments (1)

It was exciting to hear one of Donizetti’s final operas, 1840’s “La Favorite,” in the language and Comment

The four hunky gay 20-somethings fall somewhere between a boy band and a symphony orchestra. Their energetic play Comments (1)

Wagner’s “Parsifal” is not a conventional opera in dramatic structure, content, or conception and should not be staged like one. The Metropolitan Opera’s previous production — the least successful of the Otto Schenk/ G&# Comments (4)

How does a dance company survive after the death of its founding choreographer? That’s the question companies like Ailey and Limón have wrestled with successfully — by expanding their repertoires with works by new choreographers who reflect consonant aesthetic points of view. Comment

It’s hard to believe that Lulu, who’s enjoyed a steady career that began several years before making her screen debut at 18 in 1967’s “To Sir With Love — for which she sang the hit title song — should only now be making her American club debut. But that she is, at B.B. Ki Comment

Updated opera productions may be a recent phenomenon at the Metropolitan Opera but have been the norm worldwide for years. Michael Mayer (Broadway’s “Spring Awakening”) sets his new Met production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” in “Oceans Eleven” Las Vegas cir Comment

When Merce Cunningham died in 2009, his company set a new precedent for what happens to a single choreographer company when its founde Comment

The George London Foundation’s duo recitals at the Morgan Library are always worthwhile events; all credit to the Morgan for providing such an aptly intimate space. January 13’s recital featured a welcome local appearance by Anthony Dean Griffey, a superb communicator with phenomenal dict Comment

Exquisite Emmy Rossum, whom you’ll know from the film of “The Phantom of the Opera” and TV’s “Shameless,” among other things, is debuting her new CD “Sentimental Journey” (Warner Bros.). It’s a lushly produced compendium of iridescent standar Comments (1)

The sanctuary of Judson Church stands in for the ocean where collaborating dancers and choreographers Eckert+SorensenJolink found themselves adrift in “RescYou,” performed January 17-19. The subtitle, “Stranded on a life raft in a vast ocean beyond time,” is unnecessary, imposing a narrative specificity that the movement imagery of the 50-minute abstract duet transcends. The aud Comment

The holiday season of the particularly difficult year that was 2012 brought a true rite of passage for me with the death of my father, Edwin Cha Son Noh. He was quite a guy, having served at Pearl Harbor in 1941, owned and operated hotels in Waikiki, opened the first real Korean restaurant in Hawaii, and created Noh Foods International, which pioneered packaged powdered food sauce mixes, which, with the additio Comments (2)

Donizetti’s “Maria Stuarda” (1834) had a difficult birth — the opera was banned at the dress rehearsal in Naples when the queen of Naples was horrified at the onstage royal execu Comment

With imperiously crossed arms and a dramatic toss of the head, Endora-style, we are once again giving out our annual Agnes Moorehead Awards for the best of 2012. Comments (1)

Psycho dames and damned psychics stirred up a whole lot of operatic trouble in October and November. Drag diva Jeffery Roberson aka Varla Jean Merman crossed over into operatic divadom, assuming the title role in Menotti’s “The Medium” in a three-week engagement at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater a Comment