Callum John Blackmore
Callum Blackmore is a writer and a researcher currently completing a PhD in historical musicology at Columbia University. Before moving to New York, Callum was awarded degrees from the University of Auckland and the University of Leeds, and has worked with opera companies in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. His research currently focuses on opera and politics in the wake of the French Revolution.
The Met’s revival of Turandot on Saturday night was surprisingly contentious.
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At the heart of this success was Quinn Kelsey’s revelatory take on Rigoletto. He was matched, vocally and dramatically, by Rosa Feola’s Gilda—a tour-de-force performance.
The Met’s Cinderella is a charming adaptation of Massenet’s opera. Frothy, fun, and enchanting, it is a magical holiday treat for the whole family to enjoy.
Sondra Radvanovsky was a force of nature as Tosca on Thursday night at the Met.
No, we don’t really need another “Orpheus” opera. Or, rather, we don’t need this one.
Last weekend, On Site Opera presented What Lies Beneath, a program of maritime-themed operatic excerpts staged aboard the 19th century schooner Wavertree (now a part of the South Street Seaport Museum).
The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions were one of the last events I attended in person in 2020. Now, one year on, the competition has returned, this time in an online format, and this time with an entirely new name: The Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition, after the event’s new sponsors.
It was a meaty program. But both singers had the chops for it.
Despite the ongoing pandemic and the political upheaval, the Prototype Festival is back, and it is bigger and more accessible than ever before.
Everything’s coming up mélodie! As the pandemic rages on and new lockdowns have thrown large-scale performances into disarray, record labels have been releasing new albums of French art song by the bucketload.
It struck me that Jamie Barton’s voice is not dissimilar to a Henry Moore sculpture: grand and monumental but never brash or ostentatious; eccentric and offbeat but always graceful and tastefully molded.
On Sunday afternoon, husband-and-wife duo Roberto Alagna and Aleksandra Kurzak presented a charming program of operatic favorites from the patio of the Château de la Chèvre d’Or in Èze, France.
Such a sleek, polished finish is a testament to the incredible resources and experience at the Met’s disposal – to coordinate this livestream across two different continents so seamlessly and with such flair is very impressive indeed.
What does the opera singer of the future look like?
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint George is frequently referred to as “le Mozart noir.” While surely intended as a favorable comparison to Mozart, the sobriquet is diminishing, implying that Bologne’s music was somehow derivative of Mozart’s.
The opera titled L’Amant anonyme (“The Anonymous Lover”) is important because it is one of the earliest known operas by a Black composer that still survives in its entirety.
HERE’s Zoom opera, all decisions will be made by consensus, is not merely an opera written to be performed on a digital platform, but an opera that critiques the platform itself, laying bare all its social and aesthetic limitations.
In operatic pathology, diseases are endowed with preposterous mythological properties: they are both an emblem of desire and the punishment for desire. They are crime, confessional, and executioner all rolled into one.
Not everyone is happy about the Beethoven sestercentennial.
While last year’s finals were dominated by early nineteenth-century bel canto arias, this year’s finalists took on a remarkably broad range of music from a variety of repertoires.
Saturday’s performance of Così fan tutte demonstrated that even the cool, acerbic wit of Mozart’s most controversial comedy can warm our hearts in these icy winter months.
On the day of the Super Bowl, I attended a near-sold-out screening of the Paris Opéra’s recent production of Rameau’s 1735 opéra-ballet Les Indes galantes at New York’s Alliance Française.
Wednesday night’s New York Philharmonic concert was a high-stakes performance for a number of reasons.
It is rare to be moved to tears by a lieder recital. It is rarer still to be moved to tears by the third song on a recital program.
