David Fox
Two atmospheric but bleak works provide a musical illustration of the notion that misery loves company.
A Baroque Valentine’s with Opera Lafayette | Feb | DC & NYC
Celebrate love in all its guises with tender ballads, amorous duets, cheeky verses, and bawdy drinking songs plus food, cocktails and wine.
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.
Frankly, I can’t imagine there’s a future for I Married an Angel.
Kiss Me Kate is a sophisticated soufflé of a show: a comedy of manners, requiring effortless verve and elegance in the playing.
I’ve never liked the term “crossover.”
It’s difficult to reconcile what Schlather writes with what we see onstage, which is a jumble not only of pianos, but of periods and concepts.
Così fan tutte, Mozart’s final Italian comedy with Lorenzo Da Ponte, is this season’s heaviest lift for Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA).
The Day Before Spring , while not exactly experimental, shows a young and adventurous team thinking both traditionally and out-of-the-box.
It may have taken 28 years to see Robert Carsen’s production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the U. S., but it was worth waiting for.
Director Casey Hushion attempts to spice up Call Me Madam in ways that make it feel more than ever like an out-of-touch relic.
Academy of Vocal Arts’ Rusalka—surprisingly, only their second venture in many years into the Slavic repertoire—left a divided impression.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s “Music of Faith” with the Philadelphia Orchestra was a sensational concert, perhaps the best I’ve heard in more than a season.
Russian repertoire figures very centrally in AVA’s mission.
Philadelphia is a city famous for its musical institutions—so, of course, at this time of year Messiah performances abound.
Curtis Opera ventured Sweeney Todd.
In the Academy of Vocal Arts’s (AVA) clever pairing of two Puccini works, there was every reason to expect the fix was in.
It’s high time we see Funny Girl through a different lens.
Although Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti is always categorized as an opera, the piece certainly has one foot planted firmly in his jazzy musical-theater style.
Opera Philadelphia’s O18 Festival continues through the weekend, but Friday represented a finale of sorts with the last two premieres.
“Fricka is on fucking vacation.”
Imagine you are at Disneyland, and there’s an Anthony Roth Costanzo ride.
Tell us: What was the best of 2025?
Parterre Box concludes the thrilling first year of Talk of the Town by inviting your lightning rod opinions on several more categories of operatic argumentation.
