John Yohalem
In Hatuey, composer Frank London and librettist Elise Thoron have created something that crosses boundaries from cabaret romance to flashback historical pageant to revolutionary thriller.
Salieri’s La Cifra (“The Cipher”) played all over Europe for 20 years, in several translations (German, Spanish). Then, like many a worthy work, it was forgotten.
The theme was “Lyrics by Shakespeare.”
Simone Mayr’s Medea in Corinto, a curious work of 1813, has been revived by Will Crutchfield’s new enterprise, Teatro Nuovo.
Tancredi is a serious opera, which means that at its heart lies a dilemma.
New Amsterdam Opera’s concert version of Donizetti’s elaborate score La favorita, offered energy, panache and several top-notch young soloists.
Mozart was barely sixteen when he wrote Lucio Silla to open the Carnival in Milan in 1772.
When Arthur Sullivan (not yet Sir Arthur) composed his “dramatic oratorio” The Martyr of Antioch in 1880, he had just completed The Pirates of Penzance.
I broke up with my first lover over the phone and while watching TV. I’m not proud of this.
April brought I Puritani to Palermo’s centerpiece Teatro Massimo.
At Palermo’s Teatro Massimo, Zerline, the heroine of Auber’s once beloved Fra Diavolo , undresses down to frilly French skivvies.
Intolleranza was presented by Leon Botstein and his American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Thursday night, holding the audience rapt and intrigued for 65 minutes.
There are two delights here: a delectable score too rarely heard and an introduction at close quarters to half a dozen young singers ready for takeoff, indeed already flying.
There is some difficulty in describing just what IYOV the musical occasion is—and I’ll take refuge in calling it a musical work in the current PROTOTYPE Festival.
Though the novel’s structure and texture are often compared to musical forms such as Wagnerian music-drama, who would attempt to turn Proust’s A la Recherche de Temps Perdu into opera?
Forgotten operas when revived may prove to be only their own reward.
Norman Dello Joio, who was knocking about winning prizes for film and TV scores, composed The Trial at Rouen, his second opera on the subject, for NBC.
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s spectacularly colorful and glitzy new production of The Pearl Fishers opened on Sunday.
It’s a fairly traditional post-Patrice-Chereau Ring, set during the Industrial Revolution.
In the seventies and eighties Dominick Argento (who turned ninety this year) was one of the most oft-performed of American opera composers.
Flotow’s Martha, a work of 1847 that was popular around the world for a hundred years.
Riccardo Zandoni’s Il Grillo del Focolare is an opera after all.
Tchaikovsky’s Orleánskaia Djeva (The Maid of Orleans) kicked off Odyssey’s Opera’s fifth season
The turntable set looks much the same from any angle: gutted concrete tenements and perilous alleys, instantly recognizable as a scene of urban guerrilla mayhem.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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