Parterre Box
Astrid Varnay‘s autobiography. Entertaining, cogent. Shows wit and character. Much more than “I sang, I got applause, and everyone loved me.”
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.
Act now to join the starry ranks of The Talk of the Town contributors for a new quarter of à propos chitter chatter!
A live broadcast from New York
I’m bending the rules a little here, and not only substituting TV for film, but turning the category on its head by doing Movies At The Opera rather than the other way round.
Corinne Winters is back at the Met and back in the pages of parterre box, which inclines us to share a bit of Winters in Jenufa
A live performance streamed from the Wiener Staatsoper.
Francis Ford Coppola‘s Apocalypse Now (1979) uses Richard Wagner‘s “Ride of the Valkyries” to terrifying effect, depicting the brutality and horror of impersonal aerial warfare in the Vietnam War.
While Godfather III is definitely the weakest movie in the eponymous trilogy, partly due to a miscasting of Mary Corleone, I have nothing but praise for the wonderful, almost inspirational use of Cavalleria Rusticana in the finale of the movie.
Henze‘s opera in a live broadcast from the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
The Talented Mr. Ripley x Eugene Onegin.
Rachel Willis-Sorensen is the winner of the 2025 Beverly Sills Award, per the Met press office
Seven Deadly Sins, Mahagonny Singspiel, and The Songs of Happy End live from Milan
Wagner is used as incidental music or background to probably more films than any other operatic composer.
Some of you may remember the 1987 thriller Someone to Watch Over Me.
Lydia Steier‘s production in a live video stream from Vienna
Interrupted Melody was the wonderful biographical film about the singer Marjorie Lawrence. I thought it was a wonderful blending of opera with a 1950s Movie.
John Adams‘s newest opera in a live broadcast from New York
Tristan transcriptions for violin, piano, and orchestra.
George Benjamin‘s opera live from the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome
A live broadcast from New York
Antony and Cleopatra is perhaps not the showcase Elizabeth DeShong deserves, so Grand Tier Grab Bag highlights the superlative mezzo in two clips
