We've become the "United States of American Idol." First there was 9/11. Then the kids took over, and parents lost control. Meanwhile drug companies kept medicating the nation. Haiti. The oil spill... etc. Plus, "music is dead because Lady Gaga lives."

Soprano Susannah Biller is a first-year Adler Fellow with the San Francisco Opera.

Before the Internet, there was the "timetable."

Nerves are frayed and everyone is operating in a neurotically-charged frenzy.

"I saw an old man and the old man was me."

V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls.

What's happening around town.

The set, yet again, is another standout by artistic director Bill English.

The complexity of this smoky music was immediately gripping.

The grey-haired bodies of men no longer in their ‘20s have more fluidity and expression and power than many younger contemporaries.