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.
Elina Garanca is back at the Met for the first time since 2020 — her Amneris is, in a word, sensational.
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.
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
It may be blasphemy to admit—particularly this month—but usually I can either take or leave Donizetti’s serious operas. However, I love the composer in comic mode, so Chris’s Cache runs with that sentiment in offering three recordings of Don Pasquale.
BAM is back!
As a preview to a spring of Giulio Cesare, Chris’s Cache offers a rare pirate recording featuring Cecilia Bartoli, Andreas Scholl, and Les Arts Florissants.
As this is “Donizetti Month” here on parterre box, Chris’s Cache offers the recently deceased Paul Plishka and Opera Orchestra of New York with Carol Vaness in Anna Bolena and with Mariella Devia in the rarely heard Adelia.
This week, Chris’s Cache highlights Bernarda Fink and Inga Kalna in an opera by Johann Gottlieb Naumann
This week, Chris’s Cache offers a performance of Follies from 2007 featuring Lucine Amara as a rarely richly sung Heidi alongside Donna Murphy and Victoria Clark.
Prompted by Washington Concert Opera’s upcoming Luisa Miller, Chris Cache’s misbehaves five times by offering just the opera’s final act with sopranos from the 1970s, some of whom might be considered “under-appreciated”: Gabriella Tucci, Adriana Maliponte, Renata Scotto, Gilda Cruz-Romo, and Katia Ricciarelli.
As several readers put forth Patrizia Ciofi as a favorite under-appreciated soprano; Chris’s Cache enthusiastically agrees by offering a Ciofi-copia that includes complete operas by Handel and Meyerbeer and extensive excerpts of a Bellini, plus a dazzling concert of rare late 18th century arias.
One of the highlights, if not the highlight, of No-Met-February was an all-Ravel evening presented by the Juilliard Orchestra.
No Leos Janácek operas have turned up this month among the works we’d like to see at the Met, so Chris’s Cache corrects that omission with live recordings of two of the composer’s most compelling operas (performed in English).
Chris’s Cache offers ten more sopranos singing Strauss‘s Vier letzte Lieder: Sena Jurinac, Gundula Janowitz, Jessye Norman, Roberta Alexander, Edith Mathis, Helen Donath, Malin Byström, Christiane Karg, Jacquelyn Wagner, and Corinne Winters.
Fourteen years ago this month, James Levine conducted a tryout at Juilliard of a quite pleasant production by Stephen Wadsworth of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride (in English) intended for the Met. Unfortunately, that transfer never happened and New York has been the poorer for it.
Following last week’s multiple versions of three prime concert arias, Chris’s Cache concludes its Mozart month by offering more of those special vocal works, this time twenty-five arias for mezzo, tenor or bass, as well as more for soprano.
Seven years ago, Trove Thursday presented an anthology of sixteen Mozart soprano concert arias. In 2025, Chris’s Cache adds to this month’s Mozart-fest with a deep dive into three of the most celebrated of those works: Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!; Bella mia fiamma; and Ch’io mi scordi di te.
In 2011, Sondra Radvanovsky‘s Tosca proved promising; fourteen years later, it was absolutely magnificent, a completely satisfying musical and dramatic embodiment of a challenging role by an artist at the peak of her powers.
Given the keen interest in recent posts of Met pirates of Montserrat Caballé in Verdi, Chris’s Cache concludes its trio with the Spanish soprano’s Met Violetta, along with additional Met in-house recordings of Virginia Zeani, Pilar Lorengar, Jeanette Pilou, and Joan Sutherland as Verdi’s doomed courtesan.
A perfect meeting of voice with composer occurred when Arleen Auger took part in the rediscovery of early works by Mozart.
In hopes of encouraging parterre box readers to concoct their own year-end lists, I’ve put together my own.
Operettas always seem to be on the menu for New Year’s Eve, so Chris’s Cache joins in with a broadcast of Offenbach’s delicious La Grande-duchesse de Gérolstein featuring Stephanie Blythe in the title role.
If song recitals by opera stars Piotr Beczala and Asmik Grigorian sometimes came up short, Semyon Bychkov’s powerful rendition of the Glagolitic Mass instantly became one of the year’s highlights.
Anticipating the first new local Aïda in thirty-six years, Chris’s Cache revisits Verdi’s popular opera in four unusually interesting in-house recordings from the Met 1961-1976.
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.
