Parterre Box
Following the announcement that she’ll make her Met debut next season, Grand Tier Grab Bag brings Italian soprano Erika Grimaldi to your attention with a duet from Manon Lescaut.
“Soprano Aleksandra Kurzak will sing the role of Cio-Cio-San in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, replacing Sonya Yoncheva, who has withdrawn from the run due to family reasons,” says the Met press office.
For all his undeniable precision and discipline, I still find Toscanini’s tempi rushed and unyielding and his lack of rubato a chilly turnoff.
While the three leads do sing the material well, there has been a glut of recordings since then which are more complete and at least as well sung.
Ahead of his performance in Les pêcheurs de perles with Washington Concert Opera, Parterre Box features the unusually elegant Anthony León performing Mozart.
It was many decades ago that I first listened to the Solti Ring Cycle.
The Solti recording of Bohème is completely miscast.
Parterre Box highlights a busy few months of Verdi performances for Marina Rebeka and Ludovic Tézier with an exciting sample of their debuts in Nabucco.
The recent highly hyped studio recording of Puccini’s Turandot left me greatly disappointed.
All in all, an ill-advised venture.
Heavy-hitters: the first complete Ring in its history, Tosca with Marina Rebeka, Jonas Kaufmann, and Ludovic Tézier; plus recitals from Aigul Akhmetshina, Nadine Sierra, Jeanine De Bique, Michael Spyres, and more
It’s always surprised me how so many performances of the major Brecht/Weill collaborations seem to have zero clue of how to handle either Weill’s music.
Music Director Eun Sun Kim is at the center of the repertory, and a long Wagner arc is now officially underway
Parterre Box highlights two recent Verdi Requiems of interest with a pair of Libera mes from Asmik Grigorian and Anna Netrebko.
I don’t know if it’s overrated because I don’t think anyone rates it, but for pure party disc joy not much beats this 2018 recording of the original 1847 version of Verdi‘s Macbeth.
Easily the Met’s new Sonnambula, where cast and production team delivered a gorgeously sung and well thought out concept for a libretto often derided for its simplicity.
Ahead of a special boozy, bawdy Valentine’s Day concert, artistic director of Opera Lafayette Patrick Quigley speaks with soprano Maya Kherani about her journey from MIT to rising American Baroque star.
Bellini and Donizetti may be top of mind these days, so Parterre Box offers two budding belcantisti, Beth Taylor and Dave Monaco, in a duet from Rossini’s La cenerentola.
Yuja Wang slayed in this performance of Prokofiev‘s 2nd piano concerto with the Boston Symphony.
“Let me look around once more. Who knows when I shall see this house again?”
Many productions have emphasized Salome’s youth, but few have gone as far as this spectacular and visceral production at the Komische Oper by Evgeny Titov.
Christina Nilsson‘s successful Met debut as Aïda was for me one of the shining highlights of the 2025 season.
I had the pleasure of attending Manon starring Lisette Oropesa and Benjamin Bernheim at Opernhaus Zürich this past October.
Anticipating the titanic arrival of Lise Davidsen‘s Isolde in New York in March, Parterre Box is thrilled to share a bit of her debut opposite Clay Hilley recorded in Barcelona last week.
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.
