Big time sensuality
Barbara Strozzi links two sensuous programs by L’Arpeggiata and Catapult Opera.
Max Keller
(Saskia) Max(well) Keller writes about classical music and queerness. Their work has appeared in Out, Out Traveler, the Provincetown Independent, Provincetown Arts, and Early Music America. Currently New York City-based, they write the substack Poison Put to Sound.
Self-made woman
In the pursuit of clowning, Anthony Roth Costanzo’s Galas may have lost sight of “the seriousness of the theme.”
Third leg
The term “narrative prosthesis” refers to the tendency for works of literature to use disability as the conflict upon which the whole narrative hinges. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is a quintessential example of “narrative prosthesis.”
In limbo
In the “tormented writers’” room, two actors in goth makeup and bride-of-Frankenstein wigs are clacking on typewriters and throwing crumpled papers on the floor.
Nosedive
It’s not so much that I hated the Met Opera’s Grounded. I’m just not convinced that it should have been an opera.
Baby crazy
Heartbeat Opera’s The Extinctionist — composed by Dan Schlosberg with a libretto by Amanda Quaid — is the first opera, as far as I know, to stage a pap smear.
Divine mother
What does it mean to be a “gender transcendent diva?”
Ceaseless mugging
The phrase “immersive Coffee Cantata experience” evokes being dipped into a giant, boiling vat of java.
Park and “Bark”
Taylor Mac isn’t known for being short-winded.
Critical mass
Light streamed through the stained-glass windows of the Space at Irondale, once a church, during the Saturday matinée of Heather Christian’s Terce as part of the Prototype Festival.
Venite adoremus
The beginning of Mary Kouyoumdjian’s Adoration is marked by silence. The young Simon, played by Sammy Ivany, lies on his stomach, scribbling in a notebook.
Match point
A frigid air swept through the crypt of the Church of the Intercession on Friday, December 8, nearly blowing out the candles that cast a golden light on the bundled-up audience.
Prick and choose
Heartbeat Opera knows how to party.
X rated
Let’s not forget that it’s only been two years since the Met mounted its first-ever opera by a Black composer.
Cloak and dagger
The opera took place on an actual boat: the Lightship Ambrose in the South Street Seaport.
Kintsugi for Sugihara
“A Concert for Sugihara”—presented at Carnegie Hall by New York City Opera and The American Society for Yad Vashem on Wednesday, April 19—marked 80 years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The ephemeral feminine
It’s debated whether Lili Boulanger’s Faust et Hélène, clocking in at only about 30 minutes, can be considered a cantata, a one-act opera, or a “lyric episode.”
Happy, happy solo woman
There’s nothing unusual about casting a woman in Solomon‘s titular role.
Overachiever
The program for Jasmine Rice LaBeija’s concert as part of Works & Process at the Guggenheim on Wednesday, March 8 read a bit like a curriculum vitae.
Special ghost star
Ghost sex is part of the popular zeitgeist.
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).