Samuel Barber’s “Vanessa,” his Pulitzer Prize-winning first full-length opera, was commissioned by and premiered at the “old” Metropolitan Opera, in 1958. For all its virtues, a new, 2025 live ...

Samuel Barber’s 1958 opera was in disrepute for decades. A remarkable new production is the latest evidence of its rightful ...

Before maestro Gianandrea Noseda sent the National Symphony Orchestra whirling into its dazzling performance of Samuel Barber’s “Vanessa” on Thursday night at the Kennedy Center, he led the audience ...

The New York company offers a stark, taxing adaptation of the composer’s 1958 work, which centers on a woman waiting for her ...

The opera of this year’s Spoleto Festival USA is Vanessa, an existential drama that follows its titular character through a harrowing journey of love, longing and loss. It’s historically important to ...

Music by Samuel Barber. Libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti. Premiere: January 15, 1958, Metropolitan Opera, New York City. Sung in English. January 16, 1958, the morning after Samuel Barber’s Vanessa ...

Nicole Heaston and Zoie Reams in “Vanessa” | Photo by William Struhs, Spoleto Festival USA. With a libretto by Spoleto Festival USA founder Gian Carlo Menotti, a new version of Samuel Barber’s ...

Heartbeat Opera will present its adaptation of Vanessa in New York City from May 12 through May 31, 2026 at the Baruch Performing Arts Center. The production arrives in New York following a critically ...

“Time heals all wounds — and wounds all heels,” as Groucho Marx famously quipped, is a phrase that seems particularly apt with regard to 20th-century American composer Samuel Barber, who lived from ...