John Yohalem
John Yohalem's critical writings have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, American Theater, Opera News, the Seattle Weekly, Christopher Street, Opera Today, Musical America and Enchanté: The Journal for the Urbane Pagan, among other publications. He claims to have attended 628 different operatic works (not to mention forty operettas), but others who were present are not sure they spotted him. What fascinates him, besides the links between operatic event and contemporary history, is how the operatic machine works: How voice and music and the ritual experience of theater interact to produce something beyond itself. He is writing a book on Shamanic Opera-Going.
Antonio Literes, a boy soprano from Majorca, had, we may presume, friends in high places.
By John Yohalem
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It is much to be regretted that song recitalists stick to the tried, the true, the excessively familiar when the repertory of song is so vast, so full of treasures ready for the light
By John Yohalem
In The Gypsy Baron (Der Zigeunerbaron), currently (through Sunday) enjoying a revival by the Manhattan School of Music Opera Theater, you get Strauss waltzes and patriotic marches.
By John Yohalem
Be wary of operas that are famous for just one aria or just one famous opinion.
By John Yohalem
I was puzzled by my initial exposure to the Medea of Aribert Reimann, a work of 2010.
By John Yohalem
A brilliant production of La Juive like that of Peter Konwitschny generalizes the message that mindless hate does not pay and the mindless mob is always the enemy of civilization.
By John Yohalem
La Campana Sommersa (The Sunken Bell), which is being presented by the New York City Opera at the Rose Theater through April 7, is a true oddball.
By John Yohalem
Leos Janacek composed Adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears, with its singing forest creatures of many species, in 1922-23.
By John Yohalem
The New Amsterdam Opera Company presented a concert Forza (orchestra and chorus, yes; sets and costumes, no) at $35 a ticket.
By John Yohalem
Since Gilbert and Sullivan remain constant in the light-opera repertory, somewhere between Fledermaus and Les Mis in popular esteem, there must be good reasons their final collaboration, The Grand Duke, is seldom revived.
By John Yohalem
Opera composers do not often change their spots.
By John Yohalem
Pretty Yende was still hanging around after her last Barbiere and she knows the role of Elvira, having sung it in Zurich last June.
By John Yohalem
An unstaged performance of Juditha Triumphans by five soloists and the Venice Baroque Orchestra under Andrea Marcon.
By John Yohalem
strong>Christian Gerhaher does not appear at first to sing but rather to speak on pitches, telling stories, explaining words by lingering on them or biting them off short.
By John Yohalem
How often do you hear Macbeth with four really good singers in its four big roles?
By John Yohalem
Seville bills itself as the “City of 150 operas,” and celebrated this fact at the Exposition of 1992 by erecting a magnificent new opera house, the Teatro de la Maestranza, right beside the Plaza de Toros.
By John Yohalem
This year’s treat was Vittorio Gnecchi’s Cassandra, completed around 1905
By John Yohalem
David Lang is, per The New Yorker, a “postminimalist enfant terrible.”
By John Yohalem
You may wonder what Rachmaninoff’s Aleko and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci have in common.
By John Yohalem
“The music’s fun, but doesn’t Rossini repeat himself?”
By John Yohalem
You don’t often hear the grand operas of Benjamin Britten on smaller stages.
By John Yohalem
Ezio was an inspired choice for Boston’s feisty Odyssey Opera to open its “When In Rome” festival.
By John Yohalem
The grand illusion is that we know it all. From four hundred years of opera, we’ve distilled the worthy survivors.
By John Yohalem
In how many operas does the heroine drink poison and then go lengthily mad?
By John Yohalem
