Dream a little dream of me
Gabriela Lena Frank’s El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego enchants and surprises despite the Disnified treatment of its subject matter.
Annie Levin
Gild the Lily
Lisette Oropesa, Piotr Buszewski, and Luca Salsi feature in a rote revival of Michael Mayer‘s cloying production of La traviata.
Nun the wiser
Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Hildegard gives the Middle Ages the Bridgerton treatment at the Prototype Festival.
Make them die through singing
Ahead of a new production opening at the Met on New Year’s Eve, director Charles Edwards and Lisette Oropesa discuss creating an I puritani that is stark and serious — and sings.
Psychic gestures
Rolando Villazón opens up about his production of La sonnambula, how he develops characters, and what makes opera dance.
Satan keeps the beat
With tight, jazzy orchestrations, a queer-coded Mephistopheles, and sassy modern recitative, Heartbeat Opera’s fast 100-minute Faust delivers Gounod in miniature, minus some of the schmaltz.
Bye bye, birdie
A feast of whimsy for the recently resurrected in Aaron Siegel’s new opera, Rainbird
Seville servants
A muted and merry carousel ride out of feudalism in the Met’s production of Le nozze di Figaro
Kiss me beneath the milky twilight
Only disordered and volcanic intellects need apply for this beautifully deranged production of Salome from Heartbeat Opera
Birds, bears, and based boyfriends
While the Met’s Mozart-lite holiday production of The Magic Flute kept the eyes entertained with spectacular sets and costumes, the scattershot casting and lack of musical seriousness dragged down this opera for beginners.
A Christmas story
This archly traditional production of La bohème was a little shaky on opening night. It nevertheless had a full complement of sterling individual performances to take us on home.
Boomers in bloomers
The show, with its high production values and ever so abstract and high-minded Vedic metaphor, presents a nominally innovative performance that points at the avant garde but never quite ventures into challenging territory.
In the middle, somewhat depressed
It was as though they had released us from an enchantment and we all woke up giggling and surprisingly well rested.
Edible arrangements
Two experimental new works from thingNY explore decadence, quarantine, digestion, and lineage at The Exponential Festival.
Sax and the city
PRISM Quartet teams up with Tyshawn Sorey, David Krakauer, and a host of some of the finest new music musicians and composers in the nation to create Generate Music: a musical exploration of the ties that bind together Black and Jewish Americans.
Bach humbug
Peter Sellars’s rarely radical climate epic Shall We Gather at The River brought together a superb collection of musical talent for an unfortunately incoherent night of sacred song.
Raunchy, wild, and winsome
There was much to love in Andrew Ousley’s Tiergarten: a three-night cabaret revue from Death of Classical and part of Carnegie Hall’s Weimar Festival, performed in the vaulted gothic hall of the Church of St. Mary.
Top brass
Culture at the Crossroads: Zlatne Uste Golden Festival lives on at Astoria World Manor
Diplomatic immunity
Émigré, unfortunately, fails to do justice, either musically or theatrically, to this group of refugees or to the Shanghainese who took them in.
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
