Parterre Box
Giovanni Verga‘s short story (which he adapted as a play with Giuseppe Giacosa) provides the basis for Mascagni‘s famous opera.
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.
A live video broadcast from Vienna
Alex Ross wrote an exciting, gorgeously detailed examination of, for better or worse, Ricky’s far reaching influence on music, theatre, architecture, film, literature, mental illness, Satanism, Homosexuality, and rough sex.
Vishnevskaya writes rather as she sings.
Antonio Pappano leads a performance recorded in London last month
Asmik Grigorian pulls a hat trick in Puccini‘s triple bill recorded (and reviewed) last month in Paris
With tenth anniversary productions of Fellow Travelers, the heart wrenching gay romance opera by composer Gregory Spears and librettist Greg Pierce, due to grace several major U.S. companies next season, what better way to commemorate Pride Month than by reading Thomas Mallon’s 2007 historical novel on which it’s based?
Two women singing an operatic love duet is virtually an everyday occurrence, but two men? Not so much.
Julian Budden‘s masterful, three-volume analysis of the entire Verdi oeuvre is fascinating reading.
Although presented as an overview of the performance of Italian opera from the first half of the 19th century, Divas and Scholars is really an impassioned defense of musicology as a discipline and of Italian opera as a subject worthy of scholarly attention.
If you love the astonishing vocal works of J. S. Bach, John Eliott Gardiner’s 2013 book is a deeply rewarding read.
A fascinating autobiography that delivers both on the diva anecdotes and on intelligent artistic observations about the singer’s life.
Fascinating account of the role of musical theater in an uneasy context of art emerging from the conflict and resolutions of high culture and popular sentimentality in an era where elites were challenged by political instability.
The final Saturday Matinee Broadcast of the 2024-25 season, live from New York
Man, I tried so hard to get this commissioned as a radio drama, because I want everyone to know what a ride this book is.
parterre box celebrates the beginning of Pride Month with a throwback to one of the queerer events in recent operatic memory: a bit of Carmen starring Jamie Barton and Stephanie Blythe!
Not about opera per se, Sweeney Todd notwithstanding, but I’m looking forward to reading the poignant and touching ode to Sondheim’s oeuvre by Richard Schoch.
A live broadcast from Rome
Joseph Caldwell produced this charming tale from a year spent in Italy on the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
I think most of us have come around to recognizing John Adams‘s Doctor Atomic the masterpiece that it is.
The final live weeknight broadcast of the 2024-25 season from New York
A bleak and somber version of the familiar story by Saint-Réal, mixing facts with fiction, making it even more tragical than the Verdi opera.
Because D.M. Thomas‘s book was a famous book back in its day — I read it in the mid-eighties, yet have forgotten 90% of what it’s all about.
