Philip Glass will be among the five recipients of the fifth-annual Opera News Awards, announced last week. Glass is the only composer to be recognized this year and will be presented the award with his fellow honorees—soprano Martina Arroyo, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, bass-baritone Gerald Finley, and mezzo-soprano Shirley Verrett—at a gala dinner at New York's Gotham Hall on November 19. Proceeds from the gala event benefit the education programs of the Metropolitan Opera Guild.

Opera News describes Glass's artistic voice as "mesmeric yet lucid," asserting: "By composing operas that have celebrated the moral beacons of the twentieth century, Glass has welcomed modernity's heroes, as well as untold audiences, into the most ennobling of art forms."

Glass's fellow honoree Gerald Finley starred as Robert Oppenheimer in John Adams's Doctor Atomic at the Met last season, and, in fact, has performed the role in each of the opera's productions. (Adams received the Opera News Award last year.)

"His electrifying performance in the title role of John Adams's Doctor Atomic exemplified his unique ability to create powerful drama through musical and vocal means," says Opera News senior editor Louise T. Guinther. "Finley is a rare anomaly—an artist whose lush, vibrant sound, intensity of expression and translucent clarity of diction can wring a tender, almost Romantic lyricism from the most modern and angular of idioms."

Read more about the Opera News Award at metoperafamily.org.

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Original music by Philip Glass will be featured in The Public Theater's second of the summer's two Shakespeare in the Park productions, the Euripedes classic The Bacchae, opening in previews tonight at the Delacorte Theater in New York's Central Park. The play, reimagined by director JoAnne Akalaitis, features what the Public describes as "a lush choral score" by Glass. Jonathan Groff, who originated the lead role in the Duncan Sheik musical Spring Awakening and performed at last summer's Delacorte revival of Hair, stars as Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. Opening Night is August 24.

This summer's first Shakespeare in the Park production, Twelfth Night, ran through June and July and featured Audra McDonald in her Public Theater debut, with a stellar cast that also included Anne Hathaway and Raúl Esparza.

For information on free tickets to The Bacchae, visit publictheater.org.

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Glass will receive his first-ever BBC Prom at London's Royal Albert Hall tomorrow night. The program includes Glass's Violin Concerto, featuring Gidon Kremer, and the UK premiere of his Symphony No. 7, "A Toltec Symphony." The BBC Symphony Chorus joins the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and conductor Dennis Russell Davies for the occasion. In anticipation of the event, The Times (UK) published a profile of the composer, which can be found at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk. For more on the Proms, visit bbc.co.uk.