La voix surhumaine
Barbara Hannigan mesmerizes as both a brilliant vocalist and a proficient opera conductor in a double bill of Strauss and La voix humaine with the New York Philharmonic.
Dan Johnson
Dan Johnson was born in the desert and learned to play the fiddle. Now he lives in Brooklyn, working as a freelance writer and music communications specialist and helping to throw some of the city's most notorious underground parties.
A specter, haunting
Kaija Saariaho’s spectral, shattering Innocence makes its Metropolitan Opera debut.
An embarrassment of riches
A David Lang premiere at the New York Philharmonic brings a wealth of musical delights — and bodes well for Gustavo Dudamel‘s leadership.
The revolutionary costume for today
The 20th anniversary revival of Richard Foreman and Michael Gordon‘s What to Wear at the PROTOTYPE Festival showcases a fabulous ensemble.
Music is a woman
Dan Johnson on the unique voice of Hildegard composer Sarah Kirkland Snider — and why some music could only ever be written by a woman.
Staring into the abbess
Dan Johnson gives an inside look at the creation of Sarah Kirkland Snider‘s rapturous new opera Hildegard which opens at New York’s PROTOTYPE Festival next week.
Scenes from a revolution
“This isn’t an opera that touches on queer themes; it’s a bundle of queer themes tied up in an opera.”
The 500 Fingers of Dr. H
Surely you agree that piano concerti are inherently political.
The bodies keep score
Music for New Bodies at Lincoln Center’s Running AMOC* Festival proves Matthew Aucoin really is everything he’s made out to be
Now and at the hour of our death
This evening of Julius Eastman at Lincoln Center was so good it hurt
The turning point
The Comet/Poppea at this summer’s Running AMOC* festival at Lincoln Center is a thrilling, startling, deeply moving experience
Sexual orientalization
An impressive cast blurs binaries as John Adams‘s ambitious Antony and Cleopatra arrives at the Met
Down for the Count
An uneven new cast can’t dim the glow of Richard Eyre‘s incisive Le nozze di Figaro at the Met
Strawberry blonde forever
The Met Orchestra Chamber Ensemble’s Das Lied von der Erde skirts the sublime at Carnegie Hall
Frick in the sheets
The Jupiter Ensemble with Lea Desandre and Anthony Roth Costanzo offers sleek and sexy HIP inaugurates the Frick Collection’s new Stephen A. Schwartzman Auditorium
This magic moment
Look, for one of the most-staged operas in the repertoire, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte seems awfully difficult to stage.
Perspectives, reflections, obscurity, and illusion
Christopher Cerrone and Stephanie Fleischmann‘s opera at the Prototype Festival re-sets Rashomon in the Pacific Northwest and binds its characters into a hellish cycle of violence with a dark, hypnotic score
Tick, tick… boomers!
Eat the Document, which premiered at the Prototype Festival last week, compresses a decades-long, nonlinear story into a swift 90 minutes while still finding time to pause for reflection.
‘Tis better to be viol
Here’s the bottom line: at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall stage on December 3, Iestyn Davies and viol consort Fretwork made the sweetest sounds I’ve heard from human beings all year.
Sisters are doing it for themselves
War! Heroism! Mysterious strangers! Attempted suicide! Steadfast love! Così fan tutte, as staged November 18-21 at Juilliard Opera, had… none of these things.
It’s raining Mennonites
The music was at every point dramatically compelling, without seeming cheap or manipulative.
Doommates
The aesthetic vision of M. Lamar’s Funeral Doom Spiritual was undeniable.
That is the explanation of the crime
anatomy theater, receiving its New York premiere Saturday night at this year’s Prototype Festival, is a conceptual exercise in which nothing, absolutely nothing is left to the imagination.
Sea, no evil
Breaking the Waves is not only a “real opera,” it is an immensely powerful work of music drama.
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!
