John Yohalem
We can delight in films that make use of motif to give opera-lovers an extra little jiggle.
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.
Wagner must intrude at some point because he invented film music.
My first exposure to Lucia di Lammermoor came under the auspices of The Three Stooges.
Ester, Liberatrice del Popolo Ebreo was presented in concert on Thursday night by Salon/Sanctuary Concerts in the Brotherhood Synagogue on Gramercy Park, in proper time for Purim.
VIctor Herbert demonstrates in this slight, affectionate piece a talent for keeping his musico-dramatic balls in the air, as Madeleine’s spirits juggle, fall, rise again, and droop to elegant resignation at the last.
In Winterreise, Peter Mattei’s persona is burly and brusque, a sarcastic introvert, full of contempt for his romantic weaknesses with squalls of anger and lyrical reflection by turns.
We live in a time of open-season for jokes on ancient myths, mixing and matching, sometimes with great success, as The Book of Mormon and Hadestown demonstrate.
Cion: Requiem of Ravel’s Bolero is a dance-music-theater piece that Prototype Festival presented at the Joyce Theater through Saturday night.
The New York Gilbert And Sullivan Players is giving its umpteenth production of The Mikado through next Sunday at the Kaye Playhouse, and the show remains frisky and first rate.
Mozart and Donizetti could humanize characters in a farce—Mercadante in I due FIgaro cannot get a handle on them.
Heartbeat Opera has set Der Freischütz in a contemporary era, in a rural locale where gun culture reigns supreme and bullying is natural.
What is opera for if not to commemorate a national epic tragedy and triumph?
Come ye addicts of melody! After long eclipse, Bel Canto shines again!
A conversation with maestro Gil Rose of Odyssey Opera.
At the Park Avenue Armory, Barbara Hannigan chose to sing works that tested her metal in odd corners of vocalism.
In El Barbero de Sevilla, as given through the weekend by the New Camerata Opera, there is far too much comic dialogue, all of it in English and none of it sparkling.
Dell’ Arte Opera Ensemble’s “Scenes from the Tower” evening is devoted to three operas composed by women, and the metaphorical tower is women’s sequestration from the opera stage.
Whitney George’s music falls pleasingly upon the ear and is wittily scored for a small ensemble conducted by herself.
Dell’ Arte Opera Ensemble theme this summer is women composers, which is timely, and the more to be applauded as likely to turn up unusual works.
A hefty thunderclap shook Tanglewood’s Koussevitzky Shed just as Andris Nelsons raised his baton for the third act of the weekend’s concert Die Walküre.
The Mac-Haydn Theatre are giving Ragtime, a musical about turn-of-the-century race relations, unwelcome immigrants, labor revolts against brute force and the collapse of the traditional family.
The four leading roles in La Straniera were all attractively cast by Teatro Nuovo with fresh, promising young voices that did not seem quite ready for the big time.
Promenade is a powder keg but the powder may not be as explosive as it hints.
The singers and the orchestra carry the show, but where do they carry it?
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.
