Mozart’s Don Giovanni has all the hallmarks of his legendary literary counterpart: a freewheeling hedonist and serial lover with 2,065 alleged amorous conquests copiously recorded by his se  

 “A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians,” Frank Vincent Zappa, modern master, composer,  

This weekend, Zappa’s music gets the help of musicians who are very much on to the molecules. Leave it to the innovative ensemble concert:nova to present Shut Up and Play the Zappa! featuring chamber pieces by Zappa and his musical mentors, as well as covers of his Rock music, at the 20th Century Theater in Oakley.  

There’ll be smoke on the floorboards at Music Hall when Tiempo Libre joins the Cincinnati Pops for A Night in Havana with high voltage Afro-Cuban rhythms and mashups of Classical, Jazz and Latin Ame  

If you’ve had all you can Handel but need a Baroque oratorio to get you in the holiday spirit, look no further than Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. It’s not about competition with Me  

At the end of John Patrick Shanley’s multi-award winning play and film Doubt, the formidable Sister Aloysius cries, “Oh, Sister James. I have doubts! I have such doubts!” Those two short lines a  

At the end of John Patrick Shanley’s multi-award winning play and film Doubt, the formidable Sister Aloysius cries, “Oh, Sister James. I have doubts! I have such doubts!” Those two short lines are laden with pathos, emotion and high drama. It sounds operatic — and it will be. Opera Fusion: New Works chose the drama of struggle for faith and power for its inaugural workshop production, with libretto by Shanley and the score by protean composer Douglas Cuomo.  

Superstar violinist Joshua Bell kicks off his solo recital tour in Cincinnati and brings the Constella Festival’s inaugural season to a close Tuesday at Memorial Hall. Bell is a rarity, a prodigy wh  

Last fall, as the economy continued its downward spiral and arts organizations laid off staff, Tatiana Berman started to map out plans for a new arts festival in Cincinnati, and this week — defying the odds — the Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts debuts, aligning an impressive array of artists with the city’s major performing ensembles and arts venues.    

This year’s classical music season promises more than the predictable lineup of Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms, as fledgling ensembles continue to offer edgy programming, top performers mix it up, a new music festival debuts and even the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) ventures into the world of new music.