Parterre Box
If you haven’t yet sounded off for this fall’s The Talk of the Town, what on earth are you waiting for?
A Baroque Valentine’s with Opera Lafayette | Feb | DC & NYC
Celebrate love in all its guises with tender ballads, amorous duets, cheeky verses, and bawdy drinking songs plus food, cocktails and wine.
Corinne Winters will take on a trio of roles in Puccini’s Trittico in Houston.
I am looking forward to seeing The Greatest Thing Ever as Gounod‘s Juliette, a role I have never seen her in, at the Berlin Staatsoper on 6 November.
I am pretty excited to add coverage of nearby performances while I am getting settled here in Southern California.
Anticipating a busy season for both, Parterre Box features married couple Angela Meade and John Matthew Myers trading soaring Strauss lines in a duet from Die Liebe der Danae.
Thank you, Leon Botstein, for giving us a chance to hear the Berlioz adaptation of Der Freischütz (or Freyschütz).
My next production will be Aïda with the Israel Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta.
It’s always interesting to hear the master of one role in an opera take on another one.
Kaija Saariaho’s gifts for vocal and instrumental writing and the uncanniness of the themes she musicalized resonate with unforced power
Nobody emotes like Joyce DiDonato, and this week Parterre Box spotlights her new recording of Dido and Aeneas with a look at a recent live performance in the part.
De Materie (1989) by Louis Andriessen is unsuitable for home listening, so I’m really looking forward to hearing the great Asko|Schönberg ensemble perform it live in Rotterdam next season.
‘Expect nothing and you’ll never be disappointed.’
One of the most exciting things in prospect next season is Lise Davidsen‘s role debut as Isolde, to take place in Barcelona in January.
The announcement that the increasingly Trump-annexed Kennedy Center would be presenting Robert Ward‘s The Crucible seemed too on-the-nose to be true.
Barrie Kosky directs Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Sickos: “Yes… ha ha ha YES!”
This week, Parterre Box features summer Einspringerin Marigona Qerkezi in some different Verdi fare.
In a world of guilty pleasures, Arabella is mine.
I’d love to have a better answer than ‘movie star directs opera’, but I’m curious to see what Ralph Fiennes does with Eugene Onegin in Paris.
This season, I’m looking forward to Washington Concert Opera’s (WCO) production of Georges Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles on 14 March 2026.
So many Frida Leider clips to choose from, but I’ll pick this one because it is so different from what we might think of as the “typical” Wagnerian dramatic soprano.
Nowhere are the contradictions between Wagner’s small-mindedness, his meanness of spirit, and his human insight on clearer display than in Hans Sachs monologue Wahn, Wahn überall Wahn in the third Act of Mesitersinger.
The 1966 Bayreuth Festival production of Tristan and Isolde, conducted by Karl Böhm provides Nilsson with the cast she truly deserved, including Wolfgang Windgassen, Christa Ludwig, Martti Talvela, and Eberhard Waechter.
Wagner month at Parterre Box concludes in grand and explosive style: octogenarian Hanna Schwarz and sexagenarian Karita Mattila in crucial moments from Das Rheingold and Lohengrin.
Die Walküre Met 12/6/1941- Helen Traubel, Astrid Varnay (debut), Kerstin Thorborg, Lauritz Melchior, Friedrich Schorr, Alexander Kipnis, cond. Erich Leinsdorf
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.
STEMdiva status
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.