Frederica Von Stade is back

Putting a ring on it: Houston Grand Opera reveals its new season and there's extra drama

By Joel Luks

01.16.13 | 6:00 pm

In this world you're either growing or you're dying — so get in motion and grow. Words to live by from Lou Holtz, a famous American football coach, author and motivational speake ...

Shelby's Social Diary

M.D. Anderson's 70th anniversary bash brings in $4.3 million, wowing 2,000 well-heeled guests

By Shelby Hodge

05.06.11 | 12:09 pm

If Tony Awards were given for best orchestrated, most entertaining, high-earning fundraisers, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center's 70th anniversary celebration at Minute Maid Park on Thursday night wo ...

The review is in

Christine Goerke steals the show in disappointing HGO production of Ariadne auf Naxos

By Theodore Bale

05.01.11 | 5:00 am

It is reasonable to want Houston Grand Opera to finish what has been a revelatory season with its crowning achievement, a definitive performance of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s ...

Opera preview

It's complicated: HGO's Ariadne auf Naxos celebrates the beauty of contradiction

By Joseph Campana

04.29.11 | 6:00 am

Tragedies terrorize, comedies titillate. Richard Strauss’s unconventional Ariadne auf Naxos complicates. Spectacular death and sexual shenanigans are the stuff of opera. So is the beauty ...

The Arthropologist

Greek drama gone wild: Houston arts groups get ancient, reimagine classical themes

By Nancy Wozny

04.08.11 | 6:57 am

The House of Atreus gets a make-over as Houston hands the keys to the city over to Dionysus this spring, with some delicious reimagining of classical themes. The mythmastering begins tonight at ...

Houston Grand Opera presents Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos

Wortham Theater Center

04.29.11 - 05.10.11

Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos elegantly pokes a little fun at the joust between an 18th century serious opera company and a troupe of comedians at the home of the richest man in Vienna. In

the man with the red sneakers

Behind the scenes with A Prairie Home Companion as it gets Texas cozy

By Carolina Astrain

11.21.10 | 11:11 pm

Garrison Keillor didn't just use the Wortham Theater Center as a stage for a live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion Saturday evening. True to form, he made Texas part of ...

The CultureMap Review

Everything's gone green in HGO's Xerxes

By Theodore Bale

05.03.10 | 7:39 am

Handel’s Xerxes is a green opera. In the Houston Grand Opera production, with its brilliant direction from Nicholas Hytner, sets and costumes by David Fielding and lighting design by Pau ...

Shelby About Town

From Vegas to SoVino, Houstonians party like there's no tomorrow

By Shelby Hodge

04.16.10 | 12:27 pm

Partying like no one was watching — that's how the 150 revelers who checked in at Tilman Fertitta's newly-renovated Golden Nugget hotel and casino last weekend approached A. ...

Shelby's Social Diary

Fireworks on all levels made the opera ball one for the record books

By Shelby Hodge

04.12.10 | 10:39 am

Even before entering Wortham Theater Center's Grand Foyer, guests arriving on Fish Plaza Saturday night for Houston Grand Opera's ''Yellow Rose Ball" could see that this white- ...