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.
“Trove Thursday” continues its mini Shakespeare festival with a delightful performance by the New York City Opera of Die Lüstigen Weiber von Windsor.
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.
Kathleen Battle is back in the headlines returning to the Met this fall after more than 20 years, and “Trove Thursday” celebrates with a gala Falstaff.
That Placido Domingo and James Levine, the Met’s inexorable septuagenarians, would team up yet again—on April Fools’ Day, no less—for a revival of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra occasioned an uncomfortable degree of doubt and dread.
In January the New York Philharmonic announced the appointment of Jaap van Zweden as its next music director commencing the 2018-19 season.
During its first-ever Roberto Devereux Thursday evening one felt transported back to the Volpe years: four of the Met’s biggest stars shining in an opulent (if occasionally perverse) but reassuringly non-challenging production paid for by Sybil B. Harrington.
Forty-five years ago today, Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant, frustrating Follies played its first Broadway preview at the Winter Garden Theatre.
“Trove Thursday” presents Campra’s first “hit” L’Europe Galante in a broadcast from Versailles’s Opéra Royal by Les Musiciens du Louvre conducted by Marc Minkowski.
Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall two remarkable slices of soprano-heaven were served up, first by Carolyn Sampson and then by Erin Morley, during the second act of Handel’s Orlando.
As portrayed by Vittorio Grigolo, Nemorino was a manic self-absorbed, probably bipolar, stalker who—against all odds and good sense—gets the poor girl.
The wonderful Spanish mezzo Teresa Berganza celebrates her 81st birthday next week and “Trove Thursday” gets the party started.
These days a cadre of voluble opera-goers regularly issues dire warnings that anyone about to attend this or that production at the Met should close her eyes and just listen rather than witness yet another Peter Gelb regie “atrocity.”
The operas of Saverio Mercadante are often said to be among those 19th century Italian works most worthy of revival.
It took the better part of a decade—including two high-profile cancelations—or New York to finally hear Anna Netrebko in recital.
A 1984 performance of Handel’s Orlando with Marilyn Horne, Valerie Masterson, Marvis Martin, Jeffery Gall and Robert Lloyd, conducted by Charles Mackerras.
An opera revolving around chastity vows, adultery, slut-shaming, lesbianism, transvestism and much more!
Ana Maria Martinez’s tremendously impressive Cio-Cio-San dominated the season premiere of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the Met.
On her 90th birthday “Trove Thursday” presents the late great Belgian mezzo Rita Gorr parenting Régine Crespin in Massenet’s Hérodiade.
Sir Richard Eyre’s new Manon Lescaut at the Met Friday night demonstrated no particular aptitude for opera.
Three weeks ago “Trove Thursday” presented Mozart’s Lucio Silla and today we have Bach’s—Johann Christian Bach’s, that is.
This week “Trove Thursday” brings a rare in-house recording of a visit to the Metropolitan Opera House by the Staatsoper Hamburg presenting Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress with a deluxe cast
Friday’s season premiere at the Met of Donizetti’s opera about the doomed Scottish queen proved surprisingly satisfying and a genuine success for Sondra Radvanovsky.
For a change of pace, “Trove Thursday” presents three recent vocal (but non-operatic) selections.
A “lone voice in the wilderness” booed Barbara Frittoli’s calamitous Nedda.
On his 86th birthday last month, the great Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt announced his retirement.
