David Fox
Joyce DiDonato’s take on Winterreise is a conceptual misstep that, song after song, frustratingly dilutes and distracts from an often rewarding musical performance.
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Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin, always with a gift for gab, is ever more loquacious in concerts, often talking directly to the audience.
The Berta (mezzo-soprano Emily Damasco) runs away with the show.
Love in Hate Nation is a little musical that could and can… and I sure as hell hope it does!
Since 1934, Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts has been preparing emerging artists for operatic careers.
As we also saw last year, Festival O19 ended on a sweetly quiet note, movingly connecting Opera Philadelphia with the larger city and our musical future.
For the academics who may be reading this: Let Me Die exists in a confounding but intriguing interpretive liminal space.
Employing the most slimly elegant resources, Festival O’s Denis & Katya is a monumental, dramatically shattering event.
Opera Philadelphia’s Love of Three Oranges is never less than extravagantly entertaining theater.
What is the best metaphor for this year’s Bard Music Festival?
“Die Zauberflöte is an opera!” “No, it’s the first musical comedy!”
The second summer session of the Russian Opera Workshop concludes this week with concert performances of Tchaikovsky’s Maid of Orleans.
Within minutes, something wonderful happened. None of my reservations mattered.
Under any circumstances, the Russian Opera Workshop’s radiant concert performance of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta would have been an event to celebrate.
The Princeton Festival has long been a “Little Engine that Could,” but the current operatic offering, John Adams’ Nixon in China, is a good deal more than that.
With the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Candide, they saved the best (of all possible worlds) for last.
Brigitte Fassbaender‘s sound is piquant and, I’d hazard to guess, instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with her work.
For more than 40 years, the magnificent opening image from Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites has served as an icon for the Met.
Even the hit songs in this early Jule Styne musical would recede in a better show.
Two atmospheric but bleak works provide a musical illustration of the notion that misery loves company.
In the most hectic and sometimes marvelous year of theater I’ve had in memory, Lady in the Dark at MasterVoices this weekend thrilled me most.
It’s a wonderful idea to cast Bohème with young singers, and these delivered astonishingly assured, confident, mature performances.
The sexiest moment on Broadway this season features a 73-year-old man and a single button.
We owe director John Doyle and Classic Stage Company a debt of gratitude for bringing Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock—warts and all—to the stage.
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Pick a little, talk a little
Following the successful launch of the new regular feature The Talk of the Town in January, the team at the box is inviting contributions for a new quarter of operatic potpourri.
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