Program concluded with a hearty performance of Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1, with Seong-Jin Cho, Nathan Cole, Steven Ansell, and Blaise Déjardin.

I would think they’re open to the public, but I’ll see if I can confirm this

Another opera for the calendar: Premiere of Thomas Stumpf's "Half-Hanged Mary," based on Margaret Atwood's poem, performed by Tufts Opera Ensemble, Apr 23-24. as.tufts.edu/music/news-e...

My account is working. Hopefully it was a brief outage!

Made me think about the emergence of medieval and pre-classical musical elements in contemporary opera. Might be a lot of fun to compare Kaija Saariaho's "L'amour de loin," Arnold Rosner's "Chronicle of Nine," and Sarah Kirkland Snider's "Hildegard." What else belongs in this company?

Finally, what a wonderful score. Only nine musicians (or ten? there was a keyboard in the pit); each instrument was exposed and full of character, with the harp in the foreground. (I'd like to hear it again, just to pay careful attention to the harp's music.)

I hope to see every one of these singers again. I hope their exceptional work in this premiere opens many doors for each of them.

The cast was superb. We were close enough to the stage to appreciate how intent they were as actors. Secondary characters on stage in a scene to move a piece of scenery understood that they were also responding to the action, and their faces showed it. But the singing! ...

Deborah Johnson's projections were transfixing, from rich scenery textures to animations of migraine auras (so glad not to have experienced one in a long time!) and Hildegard's visions (a kite that becomes a tent that becomes an abbey—so medieval), they were wondrous to see.

On to the many virtues of this production of "Hildegard." I was struck by the way everything moved. From the dancer (Chloë Engel) who represented Hildegard's visions to the bird-headed shadowy figures who moved props to the gestures of the singers, every motion was beautifully choreographed.

So many things to praise, but first let me blow a raspberry at the venue, the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, for this large needless poster at the entrance, which a recorded voice also read at us before the production. Whoa, slow down, deeply anxious institution!

Next Vibrato Bar, “Anything But Love,” Thursday, February 12. thecabot.org/event/vibrat...

A comic scene was so well done, and not something I would have expected from Barber! The fill-in Old Doctor, Patrick Carfizzi, was marvelous.

For Odyssey Opera's "X," I was up in the balcony and couldn't see the singers due to the Strand's poor sight lines, so treated that as nothing but a concert performance. (I love the Odyssey Opera recording.) The Met production is wild in a great way.