Christopher Corwin
Christopher Corwin began writing for parterre box in 2011 under the pen name “DeCaffarrelli.” His work has also appeared in , The New York Times, Musical America, The Observer, San Francisco Classical Voice and BAMNotes. Like many, he came to opera via the Saturday Met Opera broadcasts which he began listening to at age 11. His particular enthusiasm is 17th and 18th century opera. Since 2015 he has curated the weekly podcast Trove Thursday on parterre box presenting live recordings.
A starry (and potentially annual) Christmas gala lights up Carnegie Hall.
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.
Les Arts Florissants present two ravishing programs in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
As Messiah season begins, Christopher Corwin reports on two of Handel’s forays into the Old Testament.
Celebrate today the tenth anniversary of curated Parterre Box podcasts and the winding down of Chris’s Cache with two special Met guest performances of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro led by Carlo Maria Giulini and Georg Solti.
Chris’s Cache celebrates Karita Mattila, one of its favorite singers, in a special double-bill featuring the soprano performing Janáček, one of her signature composers.
Chris’s Cache offers Nadine Sierra and Xabier Anduaga, the stars of the upcoming production of La sonnambula, in a performance of another favorite bel canto opera
Chris’s Cache presents a performance with New York prodigal son Jakub Józef Orliński in a signature role
Perhaps a piece of Mahler’s? For Wagner Month, Chris’s Cache offers the unexpected collaboration Die drei Pintos, started by Wagner-predecessor Carl Maria von Weber and completed by one of Wagner’s followers, Gustav Mahler
Chris’s Cache previews the upcoming Bayreuth Baroque Festival with a rare recording of Cavalli’s Pompeo Magno
Mexican soprano Gilda Cruz-Romo died on 28 June at the age of 85 and Chris’s Cache remembers her with live recordings of a frequent role and a rather rare one: a last-minute Met Tosca plus perhaps her only stab at the Cherubini Medea.
Suddenly Mozart’s rare early opera Mitridate, re di Ponto has become popular. Anticipating a Salzburg Festival performance on 4 August, Chris’s Cache offers two recent broadcasts, one from Boston, the other from Montpellier.
Chris’s Cache would argue that Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a Monastery is a much more enjoyable alternative to the pandemic-canceled Barrie Kosky The Fiery Angel
Chris’s Cache presents for carefree summer listening a delightful 20th century operetta featuring a perhaps unexpected casting surprise in the title role: Lehár’s Die Lustige Witwe starring Hildegard Behrens.
Perhaps it was the heatwave or the contentment of just having been able to hear her live again, but I went a bit overboard for this week’s Chris’s Cache in assembling an extravagant bouquet of Emőke Baráth, a favorite baroque diva.
Claudio Abbado made his Met debut on 7 October 1968 conducting Verdi’s Don Carlo, led five more performances through 14 November, and then never returned. Chris’s Cache offers the only complete recording I’ve run across from that run.
Chris’s Cache offers an early 80th birthday salute to Jessye Norman with broadcasts of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, and Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder plus a pair of opera arias by Verdi and Mascagni from a 1979 Atlanta Symphony concert with Robert Shaw.
In a satanic panic, this week Chris’s Cache presents trio of performances of Mefistofele
This week, Chris’s Cache features five singers in Orchesterlieder by Richard Strauss
Chris’s Cache marks the arrival of Printemps in its many guises with three beguilingly cast performances of operas by Rimsky-Korsakov, Massenet, and Saint-Saëns
Chris’s Cache looks forward to next month’s Boston Early Music Festival with a comprehensive introduction to German Baroque featuring Sandrine Piau, Jennifer Larmore, and Joan Sutherland
Christopher Corwin on three stylish sopranos delighting audiences live in New York and on recording in a trio of new releases.
This week’s Chris’s Cache presents an early May banquet of ten fine singers in eight vocal works of Gustav Mahler.
Elina Garanca is back at the Met for the first time since 2020 — her Amneris is, in a word, sensational.
Chris’s Cache highlights the erstwhile Chicago Symphony Orchestra @ Carnegie series with not one but two starry operas conducted by Georg Solti: Salome with Birgit Nilsson and a performance of Moses und Aron
