Orpheus, mythology’s greatest musician, has fascinated artists for centuries from Poussin to Rilke to Cocteau to Balanchine to Tennessee Williams. But opera composers have naturally held him most dear; even the genre’s first surviving work involved him although Jacopo Peri’s Euridice was named after his doomed wife. Read more »
One trend of summer 2017 must be Brooklyn does baroque! Following LoftOpera’s muddled Stabat Mater of Pergolesi, Wednesday brought Christopher Alden’s grimly dark and violent take on Handel’s Aci, Galatea e Polifemo at National Sawdust. Neither of these works was written to be staged but the latter production worked infinitely better both dramatically and musically. Read more »
parterre box, the world’s most widely-discussed online opera magazine, is now booking advertising for 2018 summer festivals and the fall season. We offer spaces and rates to suit everyone who is interested in reaching parterre’s discerning audience. Email us at advertising@parterre.com and be sure to ask about our deep not-for-profit discounts!
Highlights of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2019-2020 season will include the company premiere of Glass’s Akhnaten featuring Anthony Roth Costanzo and first local Turandot of Anna Netrebko (not pictured), according the always intriguing Met Future Wiki. Read more »
Akhnaten, seen at the Los Angeles Opera on November 13 tells the story of the Pharaoh who abandoned traditional Egyptian polytheism.
Philip Glass is indisputably one of the most prolific composers of the last half century, yet none of his more than 20 operas has found a place in the standard repertoire.
What is an Orphic moment? A song so sweet that even Hades must release the dead back to the living?
St. Paul’s Chapel is the perfect site for Saul, Handel’s finest dramatic oratorio.
Christopher Alden‘s production of Handel’s Partenope is so erudite and theatrically audacious and also such a rollicking ride, it’s hard to believe it isn’t crap.
Saturday afternoon at 12:30 on WQXR’s magazine show Operavore, our own JJ talks about Mathilde Marchesi and Antony Roth Costanzo discusses his Orlofsky role in the Met’s Fledermaus.
Those dear, dear people over The Greene Space at WQXR would like you, cher public, to join them this Friday for a concert saluting this year’s winner of the Richard Tucker Award, mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard.
Cher Public