My interview with Barbara Hannigan, for @parterrebox.bsky.social

On Luca Guadagnino’s Death of Klinghoffer, for @thetimes.com

The operatic event of the year

On Weimar, French chanson, and Anne Sofie von Otter’s long and varied career, for @bachtrack.com

On Susan Sontag, La Bohème, and the aestheticization of illness

went to check out the techno rave outside Parliament and I don't think I have the data allowance to share a video from it but let me tell you: there sure is a techno rave outside Parliament right now, celebrating Orban getting ousted

Viktor Orbán has ruthlessly clung to power since 2010. J. D. Vance just flew across the world to help make sure it stays that way. And yet, there's a real chance Orbán loses on Sunday. Then it becomes a question of whether he’ll accept defeat.

I can't stop laughing at this post. It's perfect.

Well at least things are more rational and just on the other side of the p-

A lovely tribute to Stephen Lewis, by @stephanienolen.bsky.social. Despite his years working in systems and institutions, Lewis never became lost to them. To the very end, he was fiercely passionate about justice for people www.nytimes.com/2026/04/04/w...

My piece on navigating the Orientalism of Turandot, for @nytimes.com

Not a surprise—but an affirmation of solid, meaningful, and progressive leadership at my place of employment, @bambrooklyn.bsky.social.

Remembering the ancient ways

I’m finally watching the gay-ass “Importance of Being Earnest” and it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen

my favorite form of discourse is “auteur theory is bad unless the auteur has politics I can’t stand”

Beatrice Venezi's appointment as music director of La Fenice has been confirmed by the opera house's board of directors. Which brings us back to @kevinng.bsky.social's question: Is her conducting any good? van-magazine.com/mag/beatrice...

My thoughts on the Met’s new Tristan

My thoughts on the Met’s new Tristan

Tristan, at last

From The Archives:

new met tristan

clearly she was onto something seeing as how they fucking killed her

"...No nurse should be asked to accept less pay, fewer benefits, or less dignity for doing lifesaving work. Our nurses have kept this city alive through its hardest moments. Their value is not negotiable.” —New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani

It’s out in German and will be soon in English: Jeff Brown and I considered the new Matthias Pintscher opera DAS KALTE HERZ at Staatsoper Berlin.

I went to see Hamnet and found it pretty tedious, though I may be allergic to this genus of weepy period piece:

BREAKING: Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife has made a “transformational” donation to the LGBTQ+ advocacy group. This large gift comes just months after the Trump administration shut down counseling services for queer youth. My latest for @wired.com:

Really saddened and shocked to hear of Andrew Clements' death. A wonderful critic, matchless on 20 and 21st century music, and a great colleague and friend to whom I owe an immense debt of gratitude for his role in giving me my own break as a critic. It's a huge loss. And he will be greatly missed.

we’re in the vet’s office waiting room and they just called for Agamemnon. we all looked at the Great Dane but it turns out Agamemnon is an orange kitten in a backpack that makes him look like an astronaut cheese puff

Immigration agents have shot at least nine people since September. All of them have been in cars.

If calling a state secret police agent a murderer for committing murder will lead to more murder by the state secret police, it sure seems like the problem is with the secret police

"In America, when a officer murders an innocent person, billionaires give them a cash bonus."

The American Dialect Society's Word of the Year is SLOP! “Slop isn’t a new word. It has moved from the pig sty, to the algorithm, and now forms newcompounds such as sloppunk, slopification, and friend slop,” Dr. Kelly Elizabeth Wright said. “This productivity has no end in sight.” 🧵

excuse me @mayor.nyc.gov, will you invite the unhoused basement bear to live in the greatest city in the world

On Festen, my favourite opera of 2025

Gonna have to rename the Streisand Effect the Bari Weiss Effect

Can you believe I paid less than a dollar for all these hits?!??!

Not the Onion. Literally, NOT the Onion. @bencollins.bsky.social

The storied Washington National Opera decides to leave the Kennedy Center where it has played since 1971, perhaps the most significant artistic rebuke yet to Trump’s campaign to remake the facility in his image and attach his name to it. @adamnagourney.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/a...

I will read every interview with Heated Rivalry writer and director Jacob Tierney because his quotes are truly a reporter's dream: www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

Looks like ICE is now cracking down on … Native Americans. This letter was just posted by the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North/South Dakota: “Our Nation is a sovereign government and our members are not immigrants. We are not subject to immigration enforcement on our own lands.”

Great @vanityfair.com story about how wealthy Upper East Side "liberals" have gone full QAnon about Mamdani. www.vanityfair.com/news/story/m...

In a @phillymag.com exclusive, here's the inside story of how Sasha Suda's reign at the Philadelphia Art Museum fell apart so spectacularly, and the board of directors who made it happen.

A photo essay from @chrisgeidner.bsky.social on Washington, D.C.’s 14th Street protest on Thursday evening. “The people, united, will never be defeated.“ www.lawdork.com/p/dc-ice-pro...

Hochul and Mamdani Announce Plan to Make N.Y. Child Care Universal in a rational world, this policy should make natalists happy, but it probably won't www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/n...

More violence. It is not an accident. The goal is to scare us.

this guy is a fucking hero

Music, non-stop. Get ready for the biggest week in contemporary music, plus listings for recommended new-music performances Jan. 8–13, 2026. Photograph: Gelsey Bell by Maria Baranova

this is just a correlation but there has been a sharp rise in men using the hip abduction machine at the gym ever since the gay hockey show came out

Here is a poem Renee Good, under her earlier name Renee Macklin, wrote, "On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs." It won a prize. It's really good. "it’s the ruler by which i reduce all things now; hard-edged & splintering from knowledge." poets.org/2020-on-lear...