Calling it a "bold plan to deliver world-class productions within reach of more New Yorkers," the financially-strapped New York City Opera announced its 2011-12 season on Tuesday at the Guggenheim Museum, in which it will move out of its longtime Lincoln Center home, the David H. Koch Theater, and perform five operas in venues around the city. 

It once meant Tchaikovsky, Sousa and Doc Severinsen. Today it also spans video-game scores, Cuban mambo bands and the Lord of the Rings Symphony. Yes, it’s high season for pops concerts. And at a time when orchestras are facing deficits, bankruptcies, and closings, pops are being taken a lot more seriously.

New York City Opera's decision to move out of Lincoln Center, cut staff across the board and scale back its performance schedule has prompted a range of reactions. The 68-year-old company plans to stage five operas in undetermined venues around New York City next season and in doing so, regain their financial footing. But plenty of questions remain – over the venues, singers and repertoire that will carry them forward. Underlying all of this is the question: will these drastic decisions help to save City Opera?

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra's season-long strike has been the starkest reminder of the challenging times facing many of America's 1,800 orchestras and their musicians. The Louisville Orchestra, the biggest in Kentucky, filed for bankruptcy in December. Its 110-year-old counterpart in Honolulu liquidated two months earlier. Other orchestras have posted major financial losses -- from Philadelphia to Westchester -- even as they've reached new artistic heights.

The classical music arena has a reputation for being a color-blind meritocracy. But the numbers tell a different story. Just about two percent of the nation's orchestra musicians are black, according to the latest data. Those numbers aren’t significantly different in the worlds of opera and chamber music. That lack of ethnic diversity is increasingly a sore point as barriers come down in other fields, from corporations to Hollywood to the White House.

The numbers tell it all: African-Americans comprise less than three percent of musicians in U.S. orchestras. Those numbers aren't significantly different when it comes to the country’s opera companies or chamber-music ensembles. Lack of supportive role models, music program budget cuts and the elitist stereotype of classical musicians all contribute to this staggeringly low figure. While there are no simple solutions, we can learn from the experiences of prominent black musicians who have carved their own paths.

Except for the occasional outlier, lists of the greatest composers usually end up touting the same critical favorites you've been hearing about for years. Not that we don't like Beethoven or Brahms, but it can get a little boring.

For this special podcast, Terrance McKnight sits down with three experts from across the musical spectrum and asks them to rank the 10 greatest classical composers of all time. It comes in the wake of an exhaustively researched top 10 list by New York Times chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini, unveiled in the Sunday Arts & Leisure section (and discussed here).

Below are our three guest’s lists. Enjoy the segment and tell us what you think in the comments box below.