Parterre Box
Much as I love the Abbado Deutsche Grammophon studio set, this 1980 San Francisco Opera live Simon Boccanegra under Lamberto Gardelli has an emotional punch.
Bring on the drama, mama!
Tito Gobbi‘s performance of Rigoletto’s “Cortigiani, vil razza dannata” offers the most musically and dramatically complete portrait of Verdi’s tortured court jester that I have ever heard.
“Soprano Vida Miknevičiūtė will make her company debut singing the role of Minnie in the new production of Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, replacing Sondra Radvanovsky, who has withdrawn due to personal reasons.”
The American tenor, who made a triumphant mid-career comeback in 2022, has died.
Handel’s Deidamia — and one of its current champions, soprano Sophie Junker — are the subject of this week’s Grand Tier Grab Bag.
I’ve looked to Sherrill Milnes many a time for insight and guidance whenever I’ve added a new Verdi role to my repertoire.
Stiffelio has always been the dark horse of early Verdi operas.
I have very few opportunities to see real-life opera divas, but when Natalie Dessay chose to debut her first Traviata at Santa Fe, there was no way I was going to miss it.
The air held a real charge that night in SF’s War Memorial Opera House.
The English soprano, famed for her interpretations of twentieth-century composers like Strauss, Britten, and Poulenc, as well as Mozart and operetta, died yesterday only a few days after announcing that she had a terminal cancer.
Nothing prepared me for the Soviero experience
A well-known Met Aïda with a starry cast from 1967 is TildyDiva’s Favorite Verdi Performance
Grand Tier Grab Bag hearkens back to the days when Sondra Radvanovsky — who is singing no Verdi at all next season — seemed like the Verdi soprano of reference.
My favorite Verdi performance is Claudio Abbado Don Carlo opening of the Scala.
The purely musical performance preserved here is thrilling, ratcheted to a higher intensity than the Deutsche Grammophon studio recording
Victoria de los Ángeles has always been my Violetta of choice, a portrayal that never ceases to move me.
I feel that the best years of Maria Callas’s vocalità, when we hear such a unique freedom and generosity in her singing, were captured in her early recordings.
Elisabeth Grümmer was, of course, very good at Wagnerian prayers, but she also shines in this Verdi prayer.
Parterre Box features the Met’s current Eugene Onegin, Iurii Samoilov, in a performance of Rossini ahead of a return to Pesaro this summer.
When I was a fledgling opera enthusiast, professors at a small-town Wisconsin college routinely travelled to Chicago for Lyric Opera performances.
Anna Tomowa-Sintow, “Ernani Involami,” from the MET Centenial Gala, 1983.
Like probably all of us, there are so many different things I could have submitted for a favorite Verdi performance.
I realize Igor Gorin did not sing much Verdi except for a few Papa Germonts, yet this performance of the famous baritone aria from Attila I claim is well-night perfect singing.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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