(AP) Thomas Ades wanted to be provocative in his first opera, Powder Her Face, when he composed a scene in which he musically depicts a sex act between the Duchess of Argyll and a waiter. Not enough ...

There is a scene in Carlos Wagner’s daring production, here receiving its first revival, that scales the heights of stylish symbolism. The humiliation of the Duchess (Joan Rodgers) is made flesh as ...

Onstage and off, the pleasures of sex have always played a major role in opera. While the lurid love lives of superstar divas kept the gossips busy, the even more lurid lives of the characters they ...

Powder Her Face, an ‘opera-portrait’ written in 1995 by the then 24-year-old Thomas Adès, is an abbreviated and only slightly masked in the libretto operatic biography of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, ...

Thomas Adès led the New York Philharmonic in an expanded version of his “America: A Prophecy” that strikes notes of caution and consolation. By Joshua Barone Listen to recordings by Maria Dueñas and ...