Masc et femme fatale
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!
Parterre Box
This summer I’m reading How Sondheim Can Change Your Life
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.
By Leyla Gender-Bender
17 comments
This summer I’m reading The Uncle 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.
By John Yohalem
22 comments
This summer I’m reading poetry by Muriel Rukeyser
I think most of us have come around to recognizing John Adams‘s Doctor Atomic the masterpiece that it is.
By Harry Rose
33 comments
Antony and Cleopatra
The final live weeknight broadcast of the 2024-25 season from New York
This summer I’m reading Dom Carlos
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.
By Remko Jas
33 comments
This summer I’m reading The White Hotel
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.
By Camille
95 comments
This summer I’m reading Fifty Five Years in Five Acts
Astrid Varnay‘s autobiography. Entertaining, cogent. Shows wit and character. Much more than “I sang, I got applause, and everyone loved me.”
By Scott Grunow
37 comments
Did somebody say something?
Act now to join the starry ranks of The Talk of the Town contributors for a new quarter of à propos chitter chatter!
Werther
Benjamin Bernheim sings the title role opposite Marina Viotti in a performance from Paris recorded last month
Armerjacquino says you must watch The White Lotus
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.
By Armerjacquino
38 comments
Il fascino immortale
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
Il trovatore
A live performance streamed from the Wiener Staatsoper.
Montagu James says you must watch Apocalypse Now
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.
By Montagu James
43 comments
Leyla Gender-Bender says you must watch Godfather III
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.
By Leyla Gender-Bender
26 comments
Der junge Lord
Henze‘s opera in a live broadcast from the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
Carmen Paddock says you must watch The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Talented Mr. Ripley x Eugene Onegin.
By Carmen Paddock
69 comments
Entrance of the Willis
Rachel Willis-Sorensen is the winner of the 2025 Beverly Sills Award, per the Met press office
Weill Triptych
Seven Deadly Sins, Mahagonny Singspiel, and The Songs of Happy End live from Milan
John Yohalem says you must watch Something for Everyone
Wagner is used as incidental music or background to probably more films than any other operatic composer.
By John Yohalem
47 comments
James Grant says you must watch Someone to Watch Over Me
Some of you may remember the 1987 thriller Someone to Watch Over Me.
By James Grant
23 comments