Spells, potions, black cats, tarot cards and incantations are the stuff of great opera plots. Fred Plotkin considers some of the great scary characters in the opera canon.

"Nobody should be surprised that composer Hans Werner Henze was at the premiere of a new work days before he died on Oct. 27 in Dresden," writes blogger David Patrick Stearns. "He was unstoppable."

Baritone Thomas Allen emphasizes how both the music of Mozart and the words of da Ponte express a duality that must be captured by singers as both musicians and actors, writes Fred Plotkin

"Saturday Night Live" and Comedy Central don’t have a monopoly on political satire. Commentary on the state of government has been showing up in for centuries in operas by Monteverdi to John Adams.

Wagner’s Rienzi is an opera that hardly ever gets produced by major companies. On this edition of Opera in Brief, F. Paul Driscoll names its challenges.

Thomas Adès’ operatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest arrived at the Metropolitan Opera on Tuesday. David Patrick Stearns writes that it has "only fitful musical brilliance and many theatrical deficits."

If your father is famous or accomplished in his field of endeavor, it creates particular difficulties in forging your own path in the same profession. Blogger Fred Plotkin considers some famed singing families.

Despite the enormous economic crisis that's crippling Spain, Valencia, its third-largest city, remains a destination for opera. Blogger Fred Plotkin was just there and shares his impressions.

From astronomy and math to physics and comparative literature, operas with nerd appeal are becoming increasingly popular.

"There are a still some very old singers who walk among us, heads only slightly bowed, and seem like messengers from that lost world of opera in the 1920s and 1930s," writes Fred Plotkin. "They actually did know Puccini."

Cecilia Bartoli is bald, vaguely sinister, and in ecclesiastical drag on the cover of her latest recording, "Mission." Tracing the evolution of her persona from the late 1980s to this can be revealing.

For almost her entire life, when Mirella Freni sang, all people could do was stop and listen. Fred Plotkin considers why.

James Levine plans to return to the podium at the Metropolitan Opera in May following a two-year absence, conducting from a wheelchair following a fall last year that left him partially paralyzed.

So what if the plot is a little bit far fetched? In this edition of Opera in Brief, we explore three show-stopping moments from Verdi’s masterpiece.

At the time that Verdi's daughter was born, the composer was deep into the composition of Il Trovatore, his strange and compelling story about babies who are switched, abandoned, even burned in a fire.

The question that seems to be pervading the world of art and creative thought, as we approach the centenary of The Rite of Spring, is one that could be responded to in over 10,000 words and still not fully answered: Does art still shock?

"While there are some singers who still are engaged by opera companies and presented as stars whom audiences flock to see, there are fewer of these all the time," writes Fred Plotkin.

Are there operas you associate with autumn? For blogger Olivia Giovetti, they include Lucia di Lammermoor, Tannhäuser, Rigoletto and Russian operas.

This hilly, leafy city above the Ohio River grew in the 19th century with waves of German immigrants who brought values of hard work, love of music and of hearty food, writes Fred Plotkin.