Blogger Olivia Giovetti reviews Kocho, a Noh-inspired opera presented by Beth Morrison Projects and featuring Seattle's Garrett Fisher Ensemble. Read on for a slideshow of this intricate multimedia work.

They are partly about the fancy wardrobe, air kisses, sparkling wine and finger food. "But a gala is really about the conviction," writes blogger Fred Plotkin, "that art matters and it is incumbent on us all to do our part to keep it front and center in the lives of us all."

With Elevator Repair Service's run of their Hemingway-based The Select (The Sun Also Rises), Olivia Giovetti considers the lyrical tendencies of recent American novels and their operatic potential. 

Say “Bordeaux” to most people and it is synonymous with the gold standard of wine. But as blogger Fred Plotkin discovered on a visit to the French city, there's also a generous mix of opera, recitals, concerts, dance and plays.

Blogger Olivia Giovetti would happily pay $460 to see each of the four subsequent performances of Atys at BAM. Read her review to find out why.

With singers like Andrea Bocelli, how do you mitigate talent with popstar status? And when you have as many fans of Bocelli, does it actually matter? Olivia Giovetti ponders this in light of the singer's recent Central Park concert.

The numbing effects of our everyday lives have been brought into the theater, writes Fred Plotkin. As a result, "most opera audience members do not activate their eyes, ears and other senses to fully take in the experience."

Olivia Giovetti names 10 opera and vocal releases to look out for this fall season, ranging from full-length Vivaldi to a long-overdue Wagner compilation.

Want more vocal music this season? Anna Netrebko loses her head, Nico Muhly experiments with polygamy, William Christie puts on his dancing shoes and Angela Meade goes to Carnegie Hall.

NPR may have recently postulated what 20 male movie roles Helen Mirren should have taken on, but Olivia Giovetti goes one step further and asks what operatic roles wold benefit from the Mirren touch.

When singers perform music without words, they might perform a vocalise. "Language is a wonderful thing, but sometimes there are no words to express feelings that might be complex, wrenching or exultant," writes blogger Fred Plotkin.

Olivia Giovetti can't stop listening to "Leck mich im Arsch," a Mozart cover by the rap duo Insane Clown Posse. So is it infantile and misrepresentative of the source material? Or a sly inside joke between past and present?

On WQX-Aria, Fred Plotkin asks "Does creative genius reside exclusively in those who write words and music, or also in those who speak or sing these words and music? And are there different types of genius? What defines each?"

For singers -- whose bodies are their instruments -- is riding a motorbike without a helmet any more acceptable or any less risky than smoking? Olivia Giovetti examines the circumstances surrounding tenor Salvatore Licitra's death and the context of opera singers playing un-safe.

For an analogy to modern-day labor-management relations, consider the works of Richard Wagner. "Wagner might have been a bad manager of his own money, but he was very attuned to the dignity of work," writes blogger Fred Plotkin.

Blogger Olivia Giovetti asks four sopranos what it's like to sing the famous mad scene from Lucia di Lammermoor. Get a taste for crazy in advance of the Met's HD screening of the work on Sunday.

Olivia Giovetti reviews Opera Omnia's sophomore effort, a punk-meets-Pulcinella staging of Francesco Cavalli's Giasone, now playing in the intimate space of (Le) Poisson Rouge through September 7.

The connective thread to the great Italian singers of the past is frayed, writes Fred Plotkin. "I wish Italians would come to feel not only proud of their cultural heritage but actively protective of it and expert in it," he writes.

Think the family in Our Idiot Brother is slightly screwball? They have nothing on some of opera's divinest dysfunctional dynasties. Read Olivia Giovetti's top 10 picks and discuss!