Dawn Fatale
Richard Lynn is a New York City based opera lover who writes at parterre box under the name Dawn Fatale. His love of opera started at a very young age when he used to listen to the Met broadcasts and obsessively read back issues of Opera News in lieu of socializing at family gatherings. In college, he majored in Chemistry while taking as many music and theater courses as possible. He worked at the Music Library to get access to the opera recordings that were off limits to undergraduates. Since the early 1990s he has been writing about opera at parterre box and other publications and is particularly interested the evolution of staging and performance practices.
Richard Lynn would like to bring some operatic podcast episodes of The Sewers of Paris and Die Primadonnen to your attention.
Tobias Picker and Aryeh Lev Stollman‘s Lili Elbe receives its first recording ahead of its stateside transition.
The premiere recording of David T. Little’s What Belongs to You reveals a work of both tenderness and artistic tenacity.
Elsa Dreisig, Jonas Kaufmann, and Malin Byström lead recent album releases.
Constance: A Confession, presented in Brooklyn by Experiments in Opera, satirizes our digital age with style.
The Bronx Opera‘s Ariadnes auf Naxos is well worth the subway ride. Plus, two strong premieres at the Brooklyn Art Song Society.
Dull conducting makes Der Freischütz miss its mark at Carnegie Hall.
A new DVD recording of La Juive boasts considerable musical strengths in spite of a frustrating production.
Opera directors could learn a thing or two from Deaf Broadway’s vivacious performance of Jeanine Tesori‘s Violet.
Mascagni‘s Zanetto, a slight, Renaissance scene, gets a new recording from the Berlin Opera Group.
Caitlin Vincent‘s new book Opera Wars paints a persuasive picture of the problems facing opera today, though her solutions leave something to be desired.
Ponchielli goes east with mixed results in I Lituani.
A pairing of rarities makes for an inspired evening with the Brooklyn Art Song Society.
Tobias Kratzer digs beneath the surface of Strauss‘s Intermezzo in an excellent new DVD from Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Juan Diego Flórez and Damiano Michieletto concoct an absinthe-fueled fever dream in a new DVD from The Royal Ballet and Opera and Opusarte.
A new recording of La fiamma from Deutsche Oper Berlin sets Respighi’s score ablaze.
Jeanine Tesori’s Blue is an ambitious and worthy opera that deserves a better presentation than it got at Lincoln Center on Saturday.
Tobias Kratzer‘s time-traveling Arabella from the Deutsche Oper Berlin, now available on DVD, turns the opera’s problems into its strengths.
A new recording of Boito‘s Nerone from Cagliari shows off an epic opera with fire and flamboyance
Jonas Kaufmann has a new lieder album called Doppelgänger, but the contents of the album vary depending on how you purchase it.
The miracle workers at Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Odyssey Opera have published another premiere recording of a work that I’ve long heard of but never heard: Dominick Argento’s The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe.
For our first review in a new series, we turn to the new recording of Dido and Aeneas featuring Joyce DiDonato, Michael Spyres and Maxim Emelyanychev leading Il Pomo d’Oro.
The moral stench seeps through Peter Gelb‘s decision to partner with the Saudi government, but what new sources of funding for the Met don’t have red flags?
Richard Lynn bravely asks what we’re hoping to get out of the continued Peter Gelb-bashing — and whether our expectations of him have ever been fair
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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