Harry Rose
Harry Rose, based in Providence, Rhode Island, is currently pursuing a PhD in Italian Studies at Brown University. Starting out blogging independently as Opera Teen in 2013, he holds the auspicious distinction of being the youngest writer to ever contribute to parterre box (at age 14) and has had the pleasure and challenge of writing for the rigorously discerning cher public since 2012. Increasingly niche hobbies and interests include opera, ballet, theatrical goings-on of the fin-de-siècle, and gatekeeping Camp.
After an uneven gala performance of Tosca on Tuesday, I’m not sure what the Met means by “celebrating Puccini.”
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With Boston Lyric Opera’s largest opera production of the season already well behind us, the one-off semi-staged gala performance of Aïda held on Sunday at Emerson College’s Colonial Theatre to support the company’s vast education and community engagement apparatus, was a particularly enticing entry on the Boston cultural calendar.
To the extent that singers should be considered stewards of their repertoire, equating bad singing to whatever “verismo” is will only be to the detriment of verismo.
Eastern Long Island remains surprisingly verdant even into the early fall.
Boston Lyric Opera’s shows, of late, are often going to war with their texts.
Does Diane Paulus really have no better ideas?
The rule that governs Dante’s Inferno is called the “contrapasso” – that every sinner is given a punishment in poetic proportion to their crime.
Not too long ago, Benjamin Bernheim gave an interview to Opéra Magazine in which he stated “Je ne suis pas un top model.”
An air of discovery pervaded the first New York presentation of La ville morte much the way that it pervades the opera’s plot itself.
“I come, I come! ye have called me long;
I come o’er the mountains, with light and song”
Puccini’s schmaltziest, most melodic, most dramatically limp, most cynical, most obscure mature work
And is this ‘Orpheus’ in the room with us right now?
Real estate is hot along the Acela corridor right now: as proof, Judith will have toured at least three castles in New York and Boston between this spring and last.
The flashing eyes, the floating hair, and the inexplicable barefootnedness during the second half of Saturday night’s performance confirmed one thing: Kristine Opolais is back.
It says something about Boston’s opera scene that one of the most consistently ambitious events of the opera season is a one-off performance played by the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras.
Julia Bullock seems to fission herself multiple times over during the course of her newest, widely ranging recital program.
New York shall never be in need of another Messiah to assist to during the holiday season, but a new tradition is beginning to crystallize at the cavernous St. John the Divine to rival it.
Gioachino Rossini’s adorable adaptation of Cinderella famously dispenses with a slipper in favor of a bracelet to lead the Principe Ramiro back to his Cenerentola. If only this performance had benefitted from such a glittering guiding hand.
Phil Chan described his point of departure for reimagining Orientalist works as the question, “what else could this be?”
Before rehearsals for Madama Butterfly started, Phil Chan sat down with the box to chat about his production, opera’s cultural appropriation problem, and why the last thing he’s trying to do is cancel Puccini.
If sex sells, then the 40 years of success for Evita show that the strawman construction and vicious takedown of an unsexy, supremely unlikable woman in just under two-and-a-half hours is just as viable a quantity.
In Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, which closed on Sunday after a nearly sold-out run—there are no doors.
I can’t imagine anything more anxiety-inducing than being put in at last-minute to sing a role in a high-profile production at the Met.
There is a moment about 75% of the way through the Rome Narrative where you can almost literally hear Tannhäuser’s stomach turn.
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